f^ '-iS 






Class n^ 



BookJ=dli411 




Fifth Meeting House. 

Corner South Common and Vine Streets. 

Dedicated August 29, 1872. Cost $52,919.13. 

Seating capacity, 1,000. Spire 160 feet high. 

The organ a memorial to Cliristopher and Joanna Bubier. 

The bell a gift from the Sunday School, cast by William Blake, 187! 



CELEBRATION 



OF THE 



27t^th Anniversary 



OF 



The First Church of Christ 



Organized June 8, I632 



LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS 

Sunday, June Ninth 
Nineteen Hundred Seven 



LYNN, MASS. 
Press of Thos. P. Nichols & Sons 

1907 



Preliminary 



THE manifest propriety of suitably observing such a 
unique event as the two hundred and seventy-fifth 
anniversary of this, which in the maintenance of faith and 
adherence to site is the oldest church organization in this 
country, was generally recognized, and preliminary meas- 
ures were taken well in advance for its celebration. 

On March 2, 1906, the Church voted to observe, by 
appropriate exercises, the Two Hundred Seventy-fifth 
Anniversary of its organization, and proceeded to the 
appointment of a committee to act jointly with one from 
the Parish. 

At a Parish Meeting held May i, 1906, the Society re- 
ceived the communication from the Church, giving infor- 
mation of its action, and voted to concur with the Church, 
and the joint committee on the Two Hundred Seventy- 
fifth Anniversary was organized as follows : 

Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary Committee 
Chairman, C. J. H. Woodbury Clerk, Henry R. French 

From the Church From the Parish 

Herbert P. Boynton Henry R. French 

Philip Emerson Freeman H. Newhall 

Miss Leila W. Holder J. L. Pendleton 

Guilford S. Newhall Louis M. Schmidt 

Rev. George W. Owen C. J. H. Woodbury 
Miss Clara M. Staton 
George A. Wilson 



14 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

Deacon George H. Martin and Miss Sadie W. Martin 
were appointed on this committee and performed efficient 
work, but resigned before the anniversary meeting on ac- 
count of their departure for Europe. 

This committee held a number of meetings and decided 
upon the exercises, whose details were carried into effect 
by sub-committees on programme, finance, invitations, 
music, decorations, hospitality and publication. 

In this work the sub-committees were assisted by a 
number who were not members of the general committee. 

The close relation of the history of this Church with the 
affairs of the town, especially during the colonial period 
in which the events occurring in this county have war- 
ranted the declaration that "Essex County is the most 
historic county in America," rendered it proper that the 
Municipality and the Lynn Historical Society should par- 
ticipate in the exercises. 

The invitations were accepted on the part of the City by 
the Mayor, and the attendance of members of the City 
Government ; while the Lynn Historical Society, on Oct. 
15, 1906, by action of its Council accepted the invitation 
and appointed a committee on the subject, and a repre- 
sentative to speak on behalf of that organization. Fur- 
thermore, the Historical Society took action relative to the 
erection of a memorial tablet to commemorate the site of 
the Old Tunnel Meeting House, but this had not been 
carried into effect at the time of the celebration. 

In addition to the above, official invitations were also 
sent to all the Churches in Lynn, to the Congregational 
Churches in Lynnfield, Saugus, Swampscott, Nahant, 



Preliminary 15 

Salem, Marblehead, Beverly and Peabody. To the ed- 
itors of the Congregaiionalist, to all past officers of the 
Church, and to absent members. 

A general invitation was cordially extended to the public 
through the daily press. 

The Meeting House was decorated for the occasion with 
the Colonial colors and also the National colors, in addition 
to which the committee on decoration made two silk ban- 
ners which bore the names of the Pastors of the Church, 
and floral decorations added to the occasion. 

The communion set of Colonial silver contributed by 
various donors was brought out and placed on the com- 
munion table for the first time for many years, as its use 
has been displaced by the modern individual cups. 

Members of the congregation cordially assisted in every 
detail where they could be of service. The infirm and the 
aged were brought to the meeting-house in automobiles 
and carriages of the members of the Parish. 

While the services of those connected with the Church 
or its ministrations may not require specific mention, yet 
it should be stated that the thanks of the Church and 
Parish are cordially tendered to the many whose services 
were given to this occasion. 

Mr. B. J. Lang, who was organist at the old church in 
1 85 1 and 1852, renewed his acquaintances and presided at 
the organ during the afternoon and evening services, con- 
ducting the musical numbers for which the special chorus 
had been trained by Mrs. Gertrude Hinman Rice, the 
Organist of the Church. 

A number of the members of the Lynn Oratorio Society 



1 6 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

contributed to the musical portion of the service by joining 
with the regular Church Choir. 

In addition to solos by Miss Grace Tufts and Mrs. 
Harriet Russell Hart of the choir, Miss Louise Woodbury 
sang solo parts in the oratorio numbers, and Mrs. Paul 
W. Brickett played the violin at the morning service. 

The services were reported in Boston and Lynn news- 
papers, especially the Lynn Daily Evening Item and the 
Lynn Evening News,oi June lo, 1907, whose accounts were 
extensive and accurate. 

Several light showers occurred during the day but the 
threatening, rather than stormy, weather did not prevent 
the Meeting House from being filled to repletion at each 
service. 

Extensive researches have been made to obtain ac- 
curate lists of former ministers and officers, and dates 
when given in full are those of authentic record, and 
a majority of them are here published for the first time. 

C. J. H. Woodbury, 
Freeman H. NewhaIvL, 
J. L. Pendleton, 
Guilford S. Newhall, 
Committee on Publication. 



Programme 



17 



Programme 



MEMORIAL SERVICE 



10.30 A.M. 



Prelude — Flute Concerto ..... Rink 

Hymn 120 — "Lyons" Haydn 

Invocation — By the Pastor 
Gloria 
Violin Solo — "Adoration" .... . Borowski 

I Mrs. PAUL W. BRICKETT. 

Responsive Reading 

Pastor : How amiable are Thy tabernacles, 
O Jehovah of hosts! 

People : My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of 
Jehovah; 
My heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God. 

Pastor : Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, 

And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay 

her young, 
Even Thine altars, Jehovah of hosts, 
My King and my God. 

People : Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house: 
They will be still praising Thee. 

Pastor : Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; 
In whose heart are the highways to Zion. 



1 8 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

People : Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a 
place of springs; 
Yea, the early rain corereth it with blessings. 

All : They go from strength to strength ; 

Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. 

Solo — " Fear Not Ye, Israel " .... Buck 

Mrs. HARRIET RUSSELL HART. 

Scripture 
Genesis xii, verses 1-5 ; Psalm cv, verses 1-15 ; Ephesians i, 
verses 3-14. 

Rbv. W.^SHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., LL.D. 

Prayer 

Rev. JAMES MORRIS WHITON. Ph.D. 

Anthem — "King All Glorious" .... Barnhy 

Offertory — Ricondate ..... Gottschalk 

Historical Sermon — "The Development of Theology in the 
First Church in Lynn." 

Rev. GEORGE W. OWEN, A.M., Pastor. 

Anniversary Hymn — To the tune of Duke Street . Hatton 

(Written for this occasion by the Pastor.) 

Hail! Ancient Church! by God's own hand 

Led on through generations long; 
Herald of truth in Freedom's Land; 

Thy hallowed age but makes thee strong. 

For fathers, founders, faithful, all, 

So loyal to thy destiny, 
Who here have raised the Gospel call, 

Our grateful song to God shall be. 

Majestic as the rolling sun. 

We see thy providential way; 
Thy hallowed history's but begun; 

Still grows the lustre of thy day. 



Programme 19 

Thou, Guardian of this Church, O God, 

Keep us united, pure and true; 
The way of faith our fathers trod 

May we in loyalty pursue. 

God of our fathers, God of grace, 

make us loyal to their fame! 
When we shall see Thee face to face 

May future ages bless our name! 

Address, Retrospect and Prospect. 

Rev. JAMES MORRIS WHITON, Ph.D., New York City, Pastor 1865-1869. 

Anthem— "Unfold, Ye Portals" .... Gounod 

DoxoLOGY — "Old Hundred" J^^ane 

Benediction 

Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D. 

PostludeinF Guilmant 

Mrs. GERTRUDE HINMAN RICE, Organist. 



Programme 



CIVIC AND HISTORICAL SERVICE 

2.30 P.M. 

Organ Prelude — Improvisation upon Luther's " Ein feste 
Burg ist unser Gott " 

Mr. B. J. LANG. 

Hymn 1336 — " America" 'Smii/i 

Scripture — Deuteronomy iv, verses 1-20 . 

Rev. GEORGE W. MANSFIELD, Lynn. 
Pastor Broadway Methodist Episcopal Church. 



20 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

Prayer 

Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., LL.D. 

Chorus — "The Heavens are Telling," from "The Creation" 

Haydn 

Welcome 

C. J. H. WOODBURY, A.M., Sc.D., Chairmaa of the Anniversary Committee. 

Address — The Parish and the Community. 

His Honor, CHARLES NEAL BARNEY, A.B., LL.B., Mayor of Lynn. 

Aria — "Hear ye, Israel," from "Elijah" . . Mendelssohn 

Miss LOUISE WOODBURY. 

Address — "The Parting of the Ways between Parish and 
Town" 

Hon. NATHAN MORTIMER HAWKES. 
Representing The Lynn Historical Society. 

Aria — "O, Rest in the Lord," from "Elijah" Mendelssohn 

Mrs. HARRIET RUSSELL HART. 

Address on behalf of Sister Churches 

Rev. frank W. PADELFORD, Lynn. 
Minister of Washington Street Baptist Church. 

The Communion Service and its Donors . 

JOHN ALBREE, Swampscott, and Miss ELLEN MUDGE BURRILL, Lynn. 

Chorus — "The Hallelujah Chorus," from "The Messiah" 

Handel 

(The Congregation will please rise.) 

Benediction 

Rev. frank W. PADELFORD. 
Mr. B. J. LANG at the Organ. 



Programme 2 1 

Programme 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 

7. P.M. 

Organ Prelude Lang 

Hymn 1312 — "Duke Street" Hatton 

God, beneath Thy guiding hand 
Our exiled fathers crossed the sea. 

Scripture — Ephesians chapter i, verse 15, to chapter ii, verse 10 

Rev. JOHN O. HAARVIG. 

Prayer 

Rev. ARTHUR J. COVELL, Lynn. 
Pastor of North Congregational Church. 

Aria — " Resurrection of Lazarus " . . . • Pugno 

Miss GRACE TUFTS. 

Address — Faith's Wider Vision. 

Rev. JOHN O. HAARVIG, Allston, Mass., Pastor 1893-1895. 

Hymn 1019 — "St. Ann's" Croft 

O, where are Kings and Empires now, 
Of old that went and came? 

Sermon — "The Church of the Future" .... 

Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., LL.D., Columbus, O. 

Trio — "Lift Thine Eyes" . . . Mendelssohn 

Misses TUFTS, WOODBURY and Mrs. HART. 

Chorus — "He, Watching Over Israel," from "Elijah" 

Mendelssohn 
Benediction 

Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., LL.D. 
Mr. B. J. LANG at the Organ. 



22 



Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 



The Church Choir augmented by members of the 
Lynn Oratorio Society. 



Chorus 



Sopranos 

*Miss A. Lillian Bishop 
*Mrs. Herbert P. Boynton 
Mrs. Effie Thomson Breed 
*Miss Lillian F. Finney 
*Mrs. Samuel L. Marden 
*Miss C. Belle Messinger 



Mrs. Charles S. Murray 
Miss Mary A. Newhall 
*Miss Elsie Ostrander 
*Miss Grace Tufts 
Miss Helen Watts 
Miss Louise Woodbury 



Contraltos 



Mrs. Annie M. Bramhall 
Miss S. Annie Davis 
Mrs. Philip Emerson 
*Mrs. Harriet Russell Hart 
*Miss Beulah M. Hinman 



George L. Bray 
Frederick L. Eno 
Raymond Q. Fox 
*Charles B. Hamilton 
W. Frederick Haskell 



Tenors 



Miss Allison P. Low 
*Miss Ella F. Marsh 
*Miss Cora B. H. Powers 
*Miss Katherine Stahl 
Miss Grace L. Trafton 



♦Samuel L. Marden 
*Samuel H. Newhall 
Fred M. Phillips 
Ernest L. Proctor 
Edwin H. Russell 



James Edward Aborn 
♦Herbert P. Boynton 
Dr. Nathaniel P. Breed 
*Paul W. Brickett 
Robert Bruce 
William W. Butman 



Basses 



♦Arthur G. Kelley 
Clifton E. Knowlton 
Charles S. Murray 
♦Ernest G. Ostrander 
♦Herbert W. Rice 
Eugene D. Russell 



George W. Walsh 



* Members of the Church Choir. 



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EXERCISES 



OF THE 

FIRST OHTJRCH AND SOCIETY IN LYNN, 

OCTOBER, 1827 



O prai 



. Gnd in hi. holiopst, 

iim in Ihe rtrn.acnr nt of hil power j 



1. Anthem.- 

Prai<»e him npft 



Prsi.f hil 
t'raise bii 



ccordnig 1 1 liH excflleni grealnen; 
1 tbe sound of (he tratnpel i 



(he lute and harp ; 



hitn nn -irii.g;? and pipes, .... 

cry Ihiog Ihal halh brealh, praise Ibe Lord, 



2. Introductory Prayer and Reading Scripture. 
3. lOOtk Psalm, L. M. \st Part 

^ale* with fon^s of joy. 



1. Ye nations of the earih rpjoice. 
Belurf (he Lord your ..-.v'rrijn Km?; 
Serve him wiih cheerful hejrl Hod »oi 
Wilh all your longurs his glory sing. 

2. The Lord u God ;— 'li» he alone 
Doth life snd brealh and being ?ite ; 
We are hi< work, and not our o>to. 
The (beep Ibal oo his pailures live. 



F.ntei 

With r - . . 

And make it your divine employ. 
To pay your thanks and bono 
The Lord i« pood ; the Lord i 
Great is bis prace, hn mercy surf ; 
And the whole race of man shnll find, 
His truth from age to age endure. 



there. 

id; 



*r5 









5. 

1. WiMiin the.e wall., our fathers reared. 
And hallowed long by prayer and praisa 
To Thee, who h.nt so oft appeared 
For tbeir relief in ancient day* ; 

2, We come a»ain our thanks to yield, 
O G..d I thou merciful and true ; 
And pray Ihat thou may'sl be our shield 
Since ivc have built tUy bouse aoeiv. 



4. Dedicatory Prayer. 
Hymn. (fVritienfor the occasion.) 

1. O make this temple all Ihy own, 

Here may thy troth and mercy shine; 
And let thy heavenly ^radf ho known, 
Till every will shall bow to thioe. 
H.re may the doctrine of onr Lord, 
He pure as once by Cedron's wave ; 
Here may nur cbij Iren learn thy word. 
And know thy ooigbty power lo save. 



Great Kin? of ?tory, come 

Aod with Ihy favour, ciowa 

This temple as thy dome— 

This people R« Ihy own; 
eneath this root. O deigo to sho*, 
ow G.'d can dwell with men be'.off. 

llere nuv thine ears attend 



Thv people's t.umhie 
iPlol praise a- 



end. 



litre m.iy '^y woiH melodious soood, 
And spread ;;le»twljoys around. 



6. Sermon. 
7. Select Hymn. 

3. Here may the ntlenlire throng, 
Imbibe thy truth and love; 
And cuDverHJomthe song 
Of seraphim above; 
Ami will4ig crowds surround thy hoard, 
Wlh sacred joy, aod sweet accord. 
y Here may our imboro sons 

And daughters sound thy praise; 

And shine like polished ^lone^, 

Through long Bufcecding days; 

Here, Lord display thy saving power, 

While leoiplet alaod, and meQ adore. 






I 









8. Prayer. 
9. Doxology. 




PRICITLO LI THE L'iHK 



Exeifises lield October 27, 1827, at 10.30 a.m. Introductory Prayer Rev. Mr. 
Taft of Hamilton; ReadinK Scripture, Rev. Mr. Oliphant, of Beverly; Dedicatory 
Prayer, Rev. Mr. Dana, of Marhlehead ; Sermon, Rev. Otis Roclvwood, pastor, text 
Psalm 87, verse 2; concluding; Prayer, Rev. Mr. Emerson, of Salem. 

At a Parish Meeting, September 17, it was voted to invite .-Monzo Lewis to write 
an original hymn, but the Fifth number on the programme bears indications that the 
honor was declined. At the same meeting it was voted tliat ' none of the committee 
should Line the Musick at these exercises." 



Fellowship Meeting 

June 7, 1907 



THE peculiar relation existing between the First Church 
and the neighboring Congregational churches, by 
reason of the fact that most of these churches had their 
origin from the First Church, found expression in a 
Fellowship Meeting on Friday evening, June 7, in the audi- 
torium. 

To this service the following churches were especially 
invited: the Congregational churches of Saugus, Clifton- 
dale, Lynnfield, Swampscott, and Nahant; the Central, 
North, Chestnut Street, and Scandinavian Congregational 
churches of Lynn. 

"The Unchangeable Christ" was the theme of a strong, 
scholarly, and timely sermon by the Rev. Arthur J. Covell, 
pastor of the North Church. The Communion of the 
Lord's Supper was observed with the Rev. Charles F. 
Weeden, pastor of the Central Church, and the Rev. W. B. 
Ronald, pastor of the Church of Saugus, in charge; being 
assisted by deacons chosen from the various churches. 
The other pastors present assisted in the various parts of 
the service. The prayer meetings of the invited churches 
having been merged into this one service, there was a good 
attendance, and those present felt that the united life 
had received an impetus that would be helpful in practical 

co-operation. 

I?ev. GEORGE WILLIAM OWEN. 



Add 



resses 



THE following addresses were given during the exercises 
on Sunday, June 9, 1907. 

RESPONSIVE READING 

Pastor : How amiable are Thy tabernacles, 
O Jehovah of hosts! 

People : My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of 
Jehovah ; 
My heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God. 

Pastor : Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, 

And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay 

her young, 
Even Thine altars, Jehovah of hosts, 
My King and my God. 

People : Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house : 
They will he still praising Thee. 

Pastor : Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee 
In whose heart are the highways to Zion. 

People : Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a 
place of springs ; 
Yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings. 

All : They go from strength to strength ; 

Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. 



Scripture — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 25 
READING OF SCRIPTURE 

Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 

Genesis XII. 

1 . Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of 
thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
house, unto a land that I will show thee : 

2. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will 
bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a 
blessing. 

3. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him 
that curseth thee : and in thee shall all the families of the 
earth be blessed. 

4. So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto 
him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy 
and five years old when he departed out of Haran. 

5. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his 
brother's son, and all their substance that they had gath- 
ered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and 
they went forth to go into the land of Canaan ; and into 
the land of Canaan they came. 

Psalm CV. 

1 . Oh give thanks unto the Lord ; call upon his name ; 
make known his deeds among the people. 

2. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him : talk ye of all 
his wondrous works. 

3. Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them 
rejoice that seek the Lord. 



26 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

4. Seek the Lord, and his strength; seek his face ever- 
more. 

5. Remember his marvelous works that he hath done; 
his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth. 

6. O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of 
Jacob his chosen. 

7. He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all 
the earth. 

8. He hath remembered his covenant forever, the word 
which he commanded to a thousand generations. 

9. Which covenant he made with Abraham, and his 
oath unto Isaac; 

10. And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and 
to Israel for an everlasting covenant. 

1 1 . Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, 
the lot of your inheritance : 

12. When they were but a few men in number; yea 
very few, and strangers in it. 

13. When they went from one nation to another, from 
one kingdom to another people. 

14. He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, he 
reproved kings for their sakes; 

15. Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my 
prophets no harm. 

Ephesians I. 

3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in 
heavenly places in Christ: 



Scripture — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 27 

4. According as he hath chosen us in him before the 
foundation of the world, that we should be holy and with- 
out blame before him in love : 

5. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of 
children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good 
pleasure of his will, 

6. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he 
hath made us accepted in the Beloved. 

7 . In whom we have redemption through his blood , the 
forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace ; 

8. Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom 
and prudence ; 

9. Having made known unto us the mystery of his 
will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed 

in himself: 

10. That in the dispensation of the fullness of times 
he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both 
which are in heaven , and which are on earth ; even in him : 

11. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, be- 
ing predestinated according to the purpose of him who 
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will; 

12. That we should be to the praise of his glory, who 
iirst trusted in Christ. 

13. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the 
word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom 
also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy 
Spirit of Promise. 

14. Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the 
redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of 
his glory. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEOLOGY IN THE 
FIRST CHURCH IN LYNN. 

Rev. George W. Owen, A.M., Pastor. 

MOST heartily do we welcome the two hundred 
seventy-fifth anniversary of this church's natal day. 
Not as those who see glory only in the past and who look 
forward to nothing except oblivion, but as those who see in 
the momentum that has been gained, a start, and a promise 
of better things to come, do we rejoice. 

Fluently and easily do we speak the words, two hundred 
seventy-fifth anniversary, but only as we begin to give 
the period a content, do we realize the vastness and im- 
portance of the period. The trend of time has been pro- 
gressive yet not without many retroactions. There has 
been much of suffering and sacrifice and somewhat of 
failure, though more of joyful service and glorious achieve- 
ment. 

The time of George Washington and the Revolutionary 
War seems far distant, but this church had rounded out a 
full century of organized and beneficent activity before 
George Washington was born, in 1732. This church is 
one hundred and fifty-five years older than the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 

Imagine that Samuel Whiting could return to earth 
to-day and, standing upon the summit of Old High Rock, 
view with wondering eyes the ocean and land upon which 
he gazed of old : the hundred churches, where in his day 




Fourth Meeting House. 

As Originally Built. 

Corner South Common and Vine Streets as originally built, being the largest in 
Essex County. Seating capacity 900. Tower 119 feet high. 

Dedicated February 1, 1837. 

Front steps removed in the summer of 1849 and accommodations for two shoe 
factories made on the ground floor, each side of the entrance. 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, AM. 29 

was one little meeting-house ; forests, farms and dwellings 
replaced with massive factories and office buildings; 
vehicles darting hither and thither with no visible power of 
locomotion; large school houses; a network of curious 
wires now and then emitting bright sparks; the sea 
ploughed by vast steamers unknown to his day. Suppose 
his vision could be on a Fourth of July or a Memorial Day, 
and his host should explain to him the tragic, yet grand 
events that were being celebrated. Suppose he should 
descend and walk through our streets beholding faces 
marked with the characteristics of nearly every nation 
under heaven. Suppose he could enter this building and 
gaze into the faces of this happy assembly, noting the 
changed garb, the different thought, the varied religious 
beUefs and practices. While his astonishment would be 
unbounded, and while many things might stir his right- 
eous indignation, yet I think he would feel that he had 
come into a world where there is as much of faith and hope 
and love as there was in the world that he left. 

For the particular scene of my present efforts, I have 
chosen a field that has not yet been occupied in our church 
history, and will attempt to give an outline of the Teaching 
of the First Church in Lynn, indicating what has been the 
theological basis of the different periods in our history and 
tracing the progress and retrogression in thought. 

It is often said that the interest in theology is dying, if 
not already dead, but this is not true. The interest in 
theology is perennial. The fact that a purely theolog- 
ical book published a few weeks ago, earned $5,000 
in royalties before it was printed, had a sale of about ten 



30 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

thousand copies the day it was off the press, and went 
through five editions in a week, does not indicate that in- 
terest in theology is waning.* 

There is a popular theological anarchy whose ad- 
herents say that they do not care upon what principles 
the moral government of the world is based, so long 
as they can subsist in comfort and prosperity by obeying 
a few practical rules. One has said that all that sad 
humanity needs is the "art of being kind," but we must 
not forget that every art has its science and that 
without a study of the science the art degenerates. It is 
the grossest superficiality that does not see that the work- 
ing principles of social life are based upon the deepest 
truths concerning God, man and destiny. It is evident 
that the nearer we get to the truth in these deeper matters, 
the better will be our working principles. We cannot be 
indifferent to theology any more than we can be indifferent 
to the principles upon which our government is estab- 
lished; for, as it makes a vast difference whether we be- 
lieve in the divine right of kings or in the divine right of 
the people ; so it makes a great difference whether we be- 
lieve that God is a tyrant, or that He is a kind Father 
willing the good of all His creatures. 

Hence, it may be interesting, as well as profitable, 
to trace the development of theological thought in the 
history of our church with a view to clearing our own 
vision and suggesting our working principles for the future. 
We are favored in having a complete list of ministers with 



• This refers to " The New Theology." The fignres are from statements in Tfif 
Conpirgationaliit. 



Address — Rev. George W . Owen, A.M. 31 

the dates of the beginning and the end of each pastorate. 
The general course of our history is well known through 
several popular and unpopular works ; but the teaching of 
the church has never been treated in a comprehensive way. 
The material for this subject is found mostly in scattered 
sermons and treatises that are distributed among the vari- 
ous libraries in this county. 

The claim has formerly been made that this is the oldest 
church in America that has changed neither its location 
nor its faith. Upon the souvenir post card, published for 
this occasion, the second part of this claim has been al- 
tered to the effect that the church has not changed its de- 
nomination. A general survey of the history shows that 
belief of pastors and people has been constantly changing, 
surging forward and then backward like the waves of the 
sea. Yet we believe that as the tide steadily rises, in spite 
of the rush and recession of the waves, so the fluctuations 
have been only incidents in the progress of truth and 
righteousness. 

Our theological history may be divided into four 
periods. The first period begins with the organization of 
the church in 1632 and extends through the pastorate of 
Jeremiah Shepard, which terminated in 1720. Stephen 
Bachiler, the first pastor, was a man of independent spirit, 
not noted for his discretion. His later life was clouded 
and we know little of what he actually preached in Lynn. 
The other pastors of this period were Samuel Whiting,, 
Thomas Cobbet, and Jeremiah Shepard. 

The church was born about one hundred years after the 
Reformation. Popular thought had reacted from the 



32 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

supremacy of the church, and had attached supreme au- 
thority to the Bible as the word of God and the infalUble 
rule of faith and practice. The doctrine of the justifica- 
tion of each individual through his own personal faith 
made every believer a priest. Since every believer had 
direct communication with God, the voice of God could be 
found most surely in the collective voice of believers; 
therefore pope and priest were unnecessary, the authority 
of believers as such being the foundation for the independ- 
ent or autonomous church. 

Calvinism was almost a synonym for Protestant the- 
ology. The logical foundation of Calvinism is the doc- 
trine of the sovereignty of God. He has created all 
things for His own glory and both by purpose and by 
action is working out that glory through the sin and 
damnation of some, and through the righteousness and 
salvation of others. 

Current theological thought then gives us these three 
great foundation truths: the authority of the Bible, the 
priesthood of believers and the sovereignty of God. It 
is natural that in the early period of our church history 
we should find these three Reformation doctrines strongly 
present. 

During the pastorate of Samuel Whiting, a Lynn lay- 
man, named Edward Holyoke, published a book called 
"The Doctrine of Life and of Man's Redemption," 
which probably gives a more thorough outline of early 
local theology than any other writing. By an elaborate 
exposition of Scripture he enforces the current theology of 
his time with certain variations. The following para- 



Address — Rev. George IV. Owen, A.M. 33 

phrases and quotations will give an idea of his views. 
God is one in essence, three-fold in personality, a Being 
that cannot be conceived or comprehended by the human 
mind, but Who is revealed in Scripture. The fall of man 
was occasioned by the mediation of fallen angels, who, col- 
lectively constitute the devil. The Bible chronology then 
in vogue is inerrant. There were 2513 years of tradition 
before Moses, and 3960 years from the first promise in 
Genesis iii, 15, to the death of our Lord. Whoever doubts 
the exactness of these dates is accursed. 

Concerning the doctrine of election we read (Page 17): 
"God hath decreed what shall be the estate of the cor- 
rupted masse of mankind; that some shall be the seed 
of Satan, and the children of perdition, and that some 
shall be elected, predestinated, and adopted Sons of God, 
by Faith in Christ, and heirs of salvation." Again we 
find the following: " The Mighty Elohim the eternall Be- 
ing hath created and disposed all things in Christ for the 
good of his Elect." (Page 9, section 13.) 

Through racial connection with Adam all mankind de- 
serve eternal punishment. But Christ by His sacrifice has 
satisfied the demands of justice so that reconciliation is 
possible. (Page 189.) Therefore God has power to 
choose whom He will to be benefitted by this satisfaction 
and to be saved. Of the unregenerate it is said, 
"His prayer is turned into sin." The poor unelected 
outcasts have no alternative by this system but to con- 
tinue in infidelity and wickedness, waxing worse and 
worse, with no prospect but an eternity of woe; and they 
have no complaint to make because by racial connection 



34 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

with Adam they are guilty and condemned. God is all- 
wise and all-powerful and disposes all things according to 
His wisdom, having mercy on some when all deserve 
damnation. 

In his book on the vindication of baptism for the children 
of church members, Thomas Cobbet clearly implies this 
same doctrine when he says that not all children of church 
members are elect, but they are externally, federally, and 
ecclesiastically members of the kingdom and have a right 
to receive its outward tokens. 

One regrettable element of this early period is its vindic- 
tiveness. Holyoke's tender regard for the unenlightened 
is expressed in the phrase, " Idolatrous heathen and such 
like, blind, ignorant sots." (Page 9.) He further says: 
"All other religions * * are abominable, and all com- 
munion with such is no better then the communion 
with devills." (Page 53.) He says that those who teach 
any other doctrine are to be accursed. (Pages 54-55.) 

Even the devout Whiting considered Quaker doctrines 
dangerous and seductive, although he believed that the 
others were too severe upon the Friends : and the saintly 
Shepard called the Indians " monsters of Cruelty." Re- 
ferring to the plague of small-pox, he said: " The Lord 
swept away thousands of those Salvage tawnies, those 
cursed Devil worshippers." 

But the teaching was not all gloomy and vindictive. 
Although the emphasis was largely upon the sterner as- 
pects of doctrine, yet the practical freedom of man's will 
was recognized, and in the practical work of these pastors 
there was a great deal of good sense and brotherliness. 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 35 

On June 15, 1648, Margaret Jones was executed at Boston 
for being a witch. From this event to the melancholy 
spectacle on Gallows Hill, in Salem, in 1792, those unfortu- 
nate victims who were accused of complicity with the 
devil were often before the courts. In his Memoir of Rev. 
Samuel Whiting, William Whiting, Esq., says (page 100) : 
" While this horrible madness ruled the minds of the mem- 
bers of the General Court, the magistrates, and most of 
the clergy, there was one minister of the gospel, Rev. 
Samuel Whiting, who, from disbelief in the existence of 
witchcraft, or from obedience to the dictates of an en- 
lightened conscience, gave no countenance to the persecu- 
tion of the so-called witches." 

The reason for this cannot be that there were no persons 
in Lynn who might have been suspected ; for if the Lynn 
of that time was a forerunner of later Lynn, it would 
not have been without such a thriving religious eccentricity. 
Such is the prominence of our city that anything strange 
or heretical that is believed or practiced anywhere is not 
worth notice if it has no adherents in Lynn! In the ab- 
sence of this persecution in Lynn, we have evidence of 
the good common sense of our early ministers and their 
staunch followers. 

In spite of his close theological distinctions, Thomas 
Cobbet, in his discourse on prayer advised all to avoid 
quibbling over matters of doctrine. Says he, " The heads 
and hearts both of Preachers and Professors shall bee so 
busily and continually taken up with endless disputes, that 
they shall have little leisure or list to attend the practicals 
of Religion, wherein the life and power of pure Religion 



36 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

doth mainly consist. Disputing times about the Specu- 
latives of ReHgion, are wont to be declining times in the 
Practicals, and Vitals thereof. Witness former ages 
wherein the School-men and their notions flourished, but 
purity and power of Religion withered." In spite of the 
narrow vice in which the theology of the time held him, 
we see here a generous, practical spirit longing for the best 
things in church and in society. 

The first church covenant in Lynn is not known, but it 
was probably similar to that in Salem which we quote : 
" We covenant with our Lord and with one another, and we 
do bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together, 
in all His ways, according as He is pleased to reveal Him- 
self to us." It is difficult to harmonize the theological dis- 
putings of contemporaneous writers with the generous 
and progressive spirit of this simple covenant. It may be 
that because the church was homogeneous there was little 
need of an elaborate statement of faith; but I think 
that the germs of religious freedom were working, and 
that we find the highest expression of the religious life in 
this simple dependence upon the guiding presence of God 
rather than in the dogmatism of the theological dis- 
courses. 

This first period, then, was strong in the faith, in- 
tolerant, vindictive, and yet characterized by a practical 
sense of brotherhood and a spirit of progress in practical 
affairs. 

The second period in the theological history of our 
church begins with the ordination of Nathaniel Henchman 
in 1720, and extends to the ordination of Otis Rockwood 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 37 

in 18 18. Obadiah Parsons was accused of immorality. 
Isaac Hurd seems to have been a man of spotless charac- 
ter, but of Unitarian tendencies, and soon resigned.* In 
the other three men of this period, whose collective minis- 
tries covered about eighty years, Nathaniel Henchman, 
John Treadwell and Thomas Gushing Thacher, we find 
Christian gentlemen of a high order. 

The fact that the church declined in membership, and 
was rent with dissensions during a large part of this time, 
has been regarded by previous writers as a providential 
punishment for the unorthodox doctrines that these men 
preached ; but I am convinced that other reasons must be 
assigned. An examination of their extant sermons does 
not show that they were unorthodox except in the points 
of Calvinism that history has rejected. The most serious 
charge against them is that they were Arminian, which 
means that they believed in the freedom of the will and 
the universal call of God as ordinarily held to-day. There 
is no indication of any doctrine that would have caused 
difficulty in an ordination council among present-day Con- 
gregationalists. Their preaching resembled more that of 
our own time than did the preaching of Jeremiah Shep- 
ard, or Otis Rockwood, or Parsons Cooke. They believed 
in the Bible as the "standing revelation of God;" they 
believed in the final judgment; they believed in Jesus 
Christ as the divine Son of God and the Saviour of men. 

From the sermons of Thacher, I quote the following sen- 
tences : ' ' Immortality was the privilege conferred by 
God upon human nature in a state of innocency; but 

• He returned later to Calvinistic belief. 



38 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

death was a part of the punishment inflicted upon fallen 
man." " ' God made man upright, but he sought out many 
inventions.' By his apostasy from God, how dreadful was 
his fall! The primitive rectitude of his nature was per- 
verted; the moral image of God upon his soul was quite 
obscured * *. But blessed be the Lord our Redeemer, 
who has made atonement for our sins, reconciled us to God, 
and 'given us the spirit of adoption.' Hence the right- 
eous are now the children of God, through the mediation 
of Jesus Christ, and by the renewing of their minds, 
through the influence of the Holy Spirit." 

In 1795, it was the sad duty of Thacher to preach the 
funeral sermon of eight seamen who were drowned in a 
wreck off from Lynn Beach. There was only one sur- 
vivor from the wreck, and he, being present at the service, 
in the presence of the eight corpses of his drowned ship- 
mates, was addressed in these words : " Perhaps I may 
never see you more ; certainly I do not expect again thus 
publicly to address you. Let me, then, most affectionate- 
ly exhort you, by the solemnities of a dying hour, as you 
value your own soul, and by a regard to that Providence 
which has preserved you, to repent of all your sins, to 
turn unto the Lord Jesus Christ, upon whose merits alone 
are founded our hopes of pardon, grace and glory. Never 
will a man be less excusable than you will be, if you now 
neglect this loud call of Providence, if you do not devote 
the remainder of your days to the service of that God 
who has, and can only sustain you." 

In July, 1803, Mr. and Mrs. Miles Shorey, who lived on 
Boston Street, were killed by lightning. In the funeral 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 39 

sermon Mr. Thacher says that through confession and re- 
pentance we are saved "by the dying love of a crucified 
Redeemer." He insists that this love is available for all. 
" ' Come unto me,' is a universal call, and if we are obedient 
to the call, God assists us with the aid of the spirit." 
"Freely the fountain flows, unrestricted is the Divine be- 
nignity." 

It is very evident that according to our judgment of his- 
tory, the doctrines that I have just quoted would not ac- 
count for a serious decline in the history of the church. 
They are not more heterodox than the doctrines of the 
Methodist Church, which has had a numerical success far 
exceeding that of our own body. They are not more heter- 
odox than the teachings of Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman 
Abbott, George A. Gordon, the two eminent divines in 
whose presence I have the honor to be upon this platform,* 
and many other ministers whose preaching has attracted 
thousands. We cannot say then that these men did not 
build up the church simply because they were not ortho- 
dox. 

We must remind ourselves also that a small follow- 
ing is not an infallible sign of heterodoxy. Some prophets 
of truth have had a small hearing in their own day, and 
some heresies have attracted their thousands. We must 
judge of the truth on its own merits and not simply by its 
apparent success. 

Some reasons may be suggested for the falling off of 
church membership. I suggest first, the unsettled state of 
thought. Layman and minister alike had begun to chal- 

*Rev. James M. Whiton, Ph.D. Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 



40 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

lenge not so much the basis of the Calvinistic theology, as 
some of the conclusions to which its adherents and also 
its opposers forced it. Since it was not longer practicable 
to kill or banish all who differed from the old views, there- 
fore the discordant elements were left to fight the matter 
out together. As they had not yet learned to do this 
peaceably, and as both sides were intolerant, it is no wonder 
that the church did not grow. 

Out of this conflict were born other churches. Had 
there been less intolerance among our membership there 
might have been fewer deflections. The ministry of this 
period inclined to liberal views, though it was not Unita- 
rian. Now if Jeremiah Shepard and Parsons Cooke are to 
be excused from narrowness and dogmatism because of 
the spirit of the time, certainly Henchman and Treadwell 
and Thacher are to be excused for liberalness on the same 
ground. 

The first serious trouble was over the refusal of Mr. 
Henchman to permit the evangelist, Whitefield, to preach 
in his pulpit. Our pastor was as fearless as Parsons Cooke 
in his attitude and writings concerning this matter, and I 
think his reasons were as good as those urged later by 
Parsons Cooke against Henry Ward Beecher. For a con- 
siderable time, Mr. Henchman seems to have been the only 
one bold enough to sign his name to his writings against 
Whitefield, and every one who hates the principle of 
anonymous writing, must admire him for his manliness. 
Nor was his attitude more bitter than that of the evan- 
gelist, Whitefield, who wrote of a criticising pamphlet : 
" The Design of the pamphlet itself is base and wicked, * * 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 41 

intended to eclipse the great work in New England and in- 
validate the testimonies," etc. This is an assertion of mo- 
tive, as presumptuous as anything written by Henchman. 

It should be borne in mind that our pastor had as col- 
leagues many of the New England ministers, and also the 
faculty of Harvard College, who strenuously opposed White- 
field. Whitefield declared that his design was, "to hew 
Stones for the Temple of God, and leave him to lay them 
where He pleas'd." Upon the title page of his pamphlet. 
Henchman quoted Proverbs xxvii, 12 : " The prudent man 
foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, but the simple pass on 
and are punished." History has proven that it is not al- 
ways a wise thing to hew stones and leave them lying 
about unless careful provision is made for putting them 
into a building. 

We should bear in mind, also, that cautiousness is not 
only excusable but proper, especially when the means for 
investigating the record and actions of a travelling preach- 
er are as limited as they were in those days. Deprive 
yourself of the mail train, the ocean liner, the telegraph, 
the telephone ; let a travelling preacher stand before you, 
who is discountenanced by many worthy ministers, and 
whose methods seem far from dignified and sane; would 
you vote to admit him to this pulpit, or would you, like 
Henchman, demand proof of his ministry ? Experience 
has proven, even in Lynn, that the membership of a church 
can distrust the opinion of accredited ministers, and put 
their confidence in a stranger at the expense of the church 
and its life. I am not criticising Whitefield, I am excusing 
Henchman. 



42 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

We must give the laymen their share of the bad reputa- 
tion of this period. When Saul wished the death of David 
he sent him out to fight with the Philistines, saying, " Let 
not my hand be upon him but let the hand of the Philis- 
tines be upon him." Parsons Cooke tells of one or more 
individuals who were instrumental in getting Obadiah 
Parsons here, believing that he was an unworthy man 
and secretly desiring that his coming would work havoc in 
the church. Whether Obadiah Parsons were guilty or not 
it would seem that some of the la3^men who helped to en- 
gage him were guilty. They would not kill the church, but 
would like to see Parsons do it. 

During this period occurred the Revolutionary War^ 
with its terrible distractions and its bad effect upon relig- 
ious life. It has been noted elsewhere, as well as in Lynn, 
that those who engaged in the conflict were likely to be- 
come demoralized, and even if they survived to return to 
their native places, often came back alienated from the 
church. John Tread well, pastor at this time took a whole- 
some and righteous interest in the conduct of the war. 
He is ever remembered as having carried his musket and 
powder into the pulpit with his Bible. Before the war we 
were distracted; after it, we were demoralized. Lynn is 
said to have had its own little tea party when several 
women besieged a Tower Hill baker and destroyed his 
tainted tea. 

The Half Way Covenant has frequently been referred to 
as a source of havoc and an indication of heterodoxy; 
but aside from its political features, the provisions of this 
Covenant are generally accepted to-day. 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 43 

The period indicates the depression that comes from 
strife, rather than the truth or falsity of any system of 
doctrine. Let us no more think of this period as one in 
which Satan had a mortgage on our church, but as a time 
of storm and stress through which God was working out 
His purpose to "make Himself an everlasting name." 

The third period of our theological history extends from 
the year 18 18 to 1864, and includes the names of Otis 
Rock wood, David Peabody, and Parsons Cooke. They 
were not only strong in the faith but they were men of 
exceptional personalities. Rockwood and Cooke were 
men of great decision and force. They gave through the 
gospel trumpet no uncertain sound. Parsons Cooke was 
almost as dogmatic as R. J. Campbell, of London, is to- 
day, but on a different basis. Peabody excelled as a 
scholar and a Christian gentleman. 

Twelve living members of this church, some of whom 
are present this morning, have been in membership fifty 
years or more, and consequently will recall much of the 
preaching of this time. One of these. Miss Eunice Sher- 
lock, was a member of the church twenty-four years dur- 
ing the pastorate of Parsons Cooke, and as he died forty- 
three years ago, she has been in continuous membership 
for sixty-seven years. 

This period, which some present can recall, was a time of 
undiluted Calvinism, when the Westminster Confession sat 
on the right hand of the throne of power and the church 
prospered. Immediately after his ordination, Mr. Rock- 
wood began to preach the doctrines of total depravity and 
election which had fallen into disuse during the preceding 



44 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

century. The efifect was two-fold. The doubters, being 
repelled, found refuge with the Methodists, Episcopalians, 
Baptists, or in the formation of the Unitarian Society. On 
the other hand, the conservative element, strengthened 
and united, formed a harmonious, though much reduced 
company, with a definite faith and an earnest purpose. 
Other churches had been established to which those of dif- 
ferent beliefs could go, and though appealing to a limited 
constituency, the growth of this church was more rapid 
than it could be under conditions of discord. 

The growth of the church is to be attributed probably 
more to this establishment of harmony, and to the de- 
cision and earnestness of the ministers, than to the quality 
of the doctrines preached. There is little doubt that in 
our day the teaching of Thacher or Henchman would at- 
tract a greater number of conscientious worshippers than 
would that of Parsons Cooke or Otis Rockwood. If this 
is true, it shows that it was not the possession of undiluted 
truth, but the fact of a harmonious and united constitu- 
ency that accounts for the rejuvenation and new growth in 
material things. 

In passing, I wish to remark concerning a statement that 
I have frequently heard. Several have told me that one of 
our former pastors used the expression that " hell is paved 
with the skulls of infants." I believe that this is absolute- 
ly without foundation and charge each one to produce his 
evidence before quoting this remark. We have enough to 
answer for, but I have found no proof that my worthy pre- 
decessors ever carried damnation to such an extent as 
this. 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 45 

In the second volume of his Centuries, Dr. Cooke, with 
his usual force, denies the charge that he or any Calvinist 
teaches infant damnation. He says, "The show of such 
teaching is made out in the quotation by cutting from its 
connection a passage in which the doctrine is taught, not 
that infants are actually damned, but that they are justly 
liable to condemnation." (Page 27.) He is answering 
a series of editorials in Zion's Herald, in 1855, by the Rev. 
Daniel Wise, D.D., attacking Dr. Cooke's first volume. 
The point of the controversy is not whether infants are 
damned, which neither Dr. Cooke nor Dr. Wise believed, 
but whether Calvinistic theology sanctions such belief. 

The saying, "Hell is paved with infant skulls," in one 
form or another has been charged against Calvinistic the- 
ologians and preachers for an indefinite time, and may 
have originated before the time of Calvin. It probably 
had its origin with the enemies of the system and not with 
its preachers. The opponents were not slow to see that 
it is a logical outcome of the strict doctrine of election, and 
eagerly picked up anything which implied it. 

Some of the early theologians believed that unelected 
infants went to a place of mild condemnation, or to a 
Limbus Infantum, where there was no positive suffering, 
while there were not the full joys of heaven, (cf. Augus- 
tine, Dante.) On the other hand, Irenaeus says, "Christ 
came to save all men by Himself," and he seems to imply 
that little children are among those who are born again 
and saved through the merits of Christ. 

Probably most of the preachers, as well as the theolog- 
ians, since the time of Him who said, " Of such is the king- 



46 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary . 

dom of heaven," have reserved a way for the positive sal- 
vation of infants even when they could not make it a 
logical part of their system. There have been two general 
ways of providing for their salvation consistently with the 
doctrine of total depravity. Some have said that the 
merits of Christ avail for them without any preparation 
of their own. Some have believed that they are saved 
through a certain " unconscious and unspoken" faith that 
they possess. Dr. Watson in his Institutes (Vol. II, p. 57), 
admits that infants share in the whole curse, physical 
death and eternal damnation; but claims that they are 
saved from the latter according to Romans v, 18. The 
present universal belief in the salvation of infants refers 
for confirmation to the words of Jesus in Matthew xix, 14. 

In view of these facts, it is an indication of ignorance 
and credulity to ascribe the teaching of the horrible doc- 
trine referred to, either to Dr. Cooke or to his theological 
associates. 

The fourth period of our theological history began with 
the coming of Dr. James M. Whiton, in 1865, and extends 
to the present day. It must be characterized as a time of 
variety and liberalness in teaching. If you will look 
through the catalogue of any ordinary theological library, 
you will find abundant evidence of the scholarship and 
eminent influence in the world of thought that character- 
izes the successor of Parsons Cooke, whom we are favored 
to have with us this morning. 

Although I have never seen Rev. Walter Barton, who 
was pastor twenty-five years ago, I have learned from 
his writings and from the reminiscences of some of our 



Address — Rev. George W . Owen, A.M. 47 

members, to love him both as a Christian scholar, and as 
a faithful minister. I have not time to mention later 
names which are familiar to very many and do not need 
discussion. I would like, however, to bear witness to the 
many evidences I have found to the Christian spirit of 
my immediate predecessor, and to say that in many ways 
my work has been easier because of his unselfish and 
conscientious labor for the kingdom of Christ. These 
later pastors have been strong, earnest, faithful men and 
into this noble succession of pastors anyone might be 
justly proud to be counted worthy to enter. 

During this later period, the church has in general been 
prosperous, especially when allowance is made for the pe- 
culiar conditions under which its work has been done. 
The removal of the old families and the constant fluctu- 
ation in the newer population, have called for heroism and 
self-sacrifice. We can reverse the old adage and say, 
" Like people, like priest ; " for during the first three periods 
the average pastorate was of about sixteen years' duration. 
During this later period, the pastorates have been about 
five years in length. Twenty-five years ago, in his histori- 
cal address, Walter Barton said that in the year 1877, 
there were more admissions to membership in the church 
than there had been in any previous year so far as the rec- 
ords show. There have not been received a like number in 
any succeeding year, but the faithful workers of this church 
may be encouraged to know that during the latest three 
years of its history, more members have been received 
than during any other period of three successive years. 
"Showers of blessing are good, but a steady rain is bet- 



48 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary. 

ter." We are not simply looking backward but for- 
ward. 

The development of thought in our own church which 
I have discussed, has been a part of a larger development 
of thought in the Christian world. Beginning with the as- 
cendency of the church of Rome there was a period in 
which supreme authority was lodged in the church. Be- 
ginning with the time of the Reformation and covering 
most of our own local history, was a period when the seat 
of authority was found in the Bible. In the later period, 
in which we are living, the basis of authority is shifting 
from the church and from the Bible to the realm of the 
individual conscience. There are certain historic facts 
recorded in the Bible which will never be outworn, but in 
the realm of truth the authority of the Bible is found only 
when it is recognized and approved by the individual con- 
science. We are depending more in these days upon the 
present Spirit of God working upon the heart and mind of 
man than upon any crystallized expression which that 
Spirit has made in the past and which is subject to differ- 
ent interpretations. 

We have lost the vindictiveness of the earlier teaching. 
With complacency and even with joy we can see other 
churches prospering and see the kingdom spreading even 
upon a doctrinal basis slightly different from our own. 
We have learned not only tolerance, but brotherliness. 
While we are only one church now instead of the only one. 
yet we are the mother of many and the sister of all others. 

The cause of this better relation is largely in our differ- 
ent attitude toward truth. We do not claim to have 



Address — Rev. George W. Owen, A.M. 49 

reached the summit. We are still on the hillside, but 
we believe that we are farther up than were our ancestors. 
We recognize that others maybe still further up than we. 
We realize, also, that some may be lower down, but we are 
on the hillside struggling upward and our horizon is still 
enlarging. We do not mentally circumscribe all truth 
by the limits of our present horizon. 

We celebrate not simply a culmination but a promise, 
and while we devoutly say, "These all died in faith," 
we can also say, " God having provided some better thing 
concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made 
perfect." While we look backward and "see what God 
hath wrought," we also look forward and believe that He 
" is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we 
ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." 
" Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus 
unto all generations forever and ever. Amen." 



50 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 



ANNIVERSARY HYMN. 

To the tune of Duke Street.— (//a/ion.) 

(Written for this occasion by the Pastor.) 

Hail! Ancient Church! by God's own hand 
Led on through generations long; 

Herald of truth in Freedom's Land; 

Thy hallowed age but makes thee strong. 

For fathers, founders, faithful, all, 

So loyal to thy destiny. 
Who here have raised the Gospel call, 

Our grateful song to God shall be. 

Majestic as the rolling sun, 

We see thy providential way; 
Thy hallowed history 's but begun; 

Still grows the lustre of thy day. 

Thou, Guardian of this Church, O God, 
Keep us united, pure and true; 

The way of faith our fathers trod 
May we in loyalty pursue. 

God of our fathers, God of grace, 
make us loyal to their fame! 

When we shall see Thee face to face 
May future ages bless our name! 




Fourth Meeting House. 
After Front Steps Were Removed. 

In tlip Slimmer of 1856, the gallery was extended, pew doors removed, Ras intro- 
duced, walls and lellings frescoed, and new vestry made under south-e.asterly portions 
of the buildinft. 

In 1865 mahogany pulpit lowered and its doors removed. In iSeptember, 1869, 
addition built at rear for new organ, m.ahogany pulpit removed ami small black walnut 
pulpit now used in vestry placed on a platform. Blinds and sashes removed and 
stained glass substituted. 

Destroyed by fire commencing at 5 p.m., December 25, 1870. 



ADDRESS — RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 

Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D., New York City, Pastor 1865-1869. 

ON ANNIVERSARY days we naturally recall the 
past. As I look into your faces, above them seems to 
hover a vision of that utterly different congregation before 
which I first stood on this ground. I recall their custom 
of standing through the prayers, and of facing toward the 
door while singing the last hymn, as if the minister had 
said, "Arise, let us go hence." 

The city I recall is scarcely a third as large as this of to- 
day; the country has more than doubled in population 
since then, and eight States have added their stars to our 
flag. The Nation, a world-power now, courted by all and 
fearing none, was then just emerging victorious from a 
struggle for its life — the President of its Confederate foes 
having been taken prisoner on the day I became your 

pastor. 

Immense the contrast between then and now! Im- 
mense even in the homeliest matters. 

Think of paying, as then, 50 cents a yard for cotton 
cloth, 50 cents a pound for butter by the firkin, $2.00 a 
pound for breakfast tea, and so on, out of a salary of $1800 
with a United States income tax deducted. 

At such a time it is the good wife on whom the burden 
bears heaviest. She is the savior of the situation. 

Well, the Union is worth far more than all it cost us. 



52 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

A great transition had then been just accomphshed. 
The design of the framers of our National Constitution 
in 1787, to make " a more perfect Union," was finally real- 
ized in 1865, when discordant States had been hammered 
into an indissoluble Nation on the anvil of civil war. An- 
other great transition, not political but theological, was 
then approaching, but we did not know it; we realize it 
now. 

The last three decades of the nineteenth century wit- 
nessed a greater intellectual change than any period since 
Luther's time. The new idea of the unvierse, which 
Copernicus introduced in 1 543 by showing that our earth 
is flying through the heavens, instead of the heavens re- 
volving round the earth, as all had supposed, was matched 
before this house rose from the ashes of its predecessor by 
the new idea that Darwin gave of man, as physically de- 
scended from ancient animal forms, instead of being cre- 
ated by a fiat of Almighty power 6000 years ago, according 
to traditional belief. 

Darwin's epoch-making book was published in New 
York so recently as 1 87 1 . This made havoc of an import- 
ant part of the current evangelical theology — the doc- 
trine held since the fifth century, that the sin of Adam 
had involved all mankind in ruin. The biological doctrine 
of evolution was consequently denounced by theologians 
as "infidel" and "atheistic." The result was what hap- 
pened to the bull that bore down against the locomotive. 
The good men who quoted Scripture against biology are 
now classed with the good men who quoted it against the 
new astronomy. When Henry Ward Beecher showed 



Address — Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. 53 

Plymouth Church that the new science of biology required 
him to reject the orthodox doctrine of the poisoning of 
the human race, so to speak, in its cradle, certain ministers 
crowded him out of their fellowship in the New York and 
Brooklyn Association. That happened so recently as 
1882; now it reads more like ancient history, so far have 
we gotten past that sort of thing. In fact, before 1895, 
the so-called New England Theology, a mitigated form of 
Calvinism, had "perished from off the face of the earth " 
— I quote the words of its sympathetic historian in a re- 
cent book. 

Why was this? Because Calvinism represented God's 
work of redemption from sin as a reconstruction of the 
humanity that was supposed to be spoiled by the 
sin of Adam. Accordingly it fell before the new science, 
which has taught us to regard divine redemption as a con- 
structive work, carrying forward from the origin of man- 
kind the evolution of the spiritual humanity, which in the 
ages to come shall exhibit in perfected man the image of 
his Father, God. The result to real Christianity has been 
as if painted stucco had been scraped off from white 
marble on which it had been overlaid. The real Christ in 
the glory of his divine humanity has been revealed to us 
as our Elder Brother, who saves us through our imitation 
of him. 

In that collapse of the theology which, forty years ago, 
was supposed to be as enduring as the sun, other factors, 
of course, helped, chiefly the critical study of the Bible, 
but of this there is no time to speak. I only observe that 
the great transition from mediaeval to modern ideas of man 



54 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

as related to God has been practically accomplished, at 
least in the Congregational churches. Sharp the contrast 
in the theological situation and its burning questions then 
and now! Nowhere is it sharper than right here. It is 
hard to realize now that the great question raised by the 
Council that examined me as to my qualifications for a pas- 
torate here was the moral state of new-born infants. For 
in 1865 this church was still standing, with a few others 
like minded, for even an older type of Calvinism than that 
of the now defunct New England theology. There was 
unwillingness to have any pulpit exchanges with Methodist 
neighbors. There was unwillingness to have any profes- 
sors from Andover Seminary preach in the pastor's vaca- 
tion, because that institution was suspected of insufficient 
orthodoxy. To say that a man might not be soundly or- 
thodox as to the Trinity and yet be saved, was thought 
dangerous doctrine. A far cry it is to such an attitude, 
but that was only forty years ago. 

But let us honor those who were true to the light that 
was in them, however dim, and live up to our own convic- 
tions as they lived up to theirs. 

The church of that day used its intellectual and spirit- 
ual equipment well. During my pastorate, 1865- 1869, it 
received nearly a hundred new members — forty-eight of 
them on confession of faith. The church of to-day, with 
the same spiritual and a better intellectual equipment, is 
capable of even better results. 

From this backward look we turn to the forward. We 
have seen that the church was nearing a great transition, 



Address — Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. 55 

and knew it not. To-day it is facing, nay, already enter- 
ing another great transition period, and is more or less con- 
scious of the fact. Only those can be unconscious of it 
who do not read and think. 

The past transition was theological, from mediaeval to 
modern conceptions of man as related to God. The pres- 
ent transition is sociological, to more fraternal conceptions 
of man as related to his fellow-man in society. The theo- 
logical transition accomplished an intellectual reform in 
the readjustment of dogma to science. The sociological 
transition has a moral reform to accomplish in readjusting 
the relation of the individual to society, and especially 
the relation of the strong to the weak. The former issue 
was mainly within the church itself; the present issue is 
between the church and the masses outside, who cry for 
social justice, and watch to see what sympathy their cry 
arouses. 

As soon as the Civil War ended, a period of marvelous 
material expansion began. For many years all social in- 
terests were profligately sacrificed to individual rapacity 
for wealth. This is now in a fair way to be curbed by 
long-needed laws. But quite apart from the enormous 
rascality which has necessitated the general house-cleaning 
now going on in Federal, State, and City governments, 
there are grave inequities, no less iniquitous, of which our 
social system must be purged, or Christianity must suffer 
disastrous defeat. 

When the laborer's wages cannot procure a sanitary 
home for the cradle of his babes; when his children have 
to be taken from school to earn their bread; when their 



56 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

mother has to give herself to the factory rather than to her 
family ; when industry destroys more lives than the battle- 
field, the contrast between such conditions and the splen- 
did opulence to which they minister evidences that many 
humble producers of wealth are denied their economic 
rights, and that social justice is set aside. 

On one side the scientific economist testifies that it is 
really so. On the other side, while conditions are, on the 
whole, better in Massachusetts than in other States, and in 
Lynn than in many cities, yet everywhere in Christendom 
are economic wrongs and little brothers disinherited. 
These look to the churches as the professed moral leaders 
of the world, and as bound to plead their cause. 

What should the church do but imitate her Founder? 
He dealt with the great problem of human need on this 
principle: first, the natural, then the spiritual, as Paul 
has phrased it. Through his ministry of help to natural 
needs he made way for his spiritual uplift. First he 
healed, then he instructed. But we have reversed this; 
have put the spiritual first, neglecting the natural; have 
been content with preaching righteousness to those that 
needed first to experience its practice. 

The church that shows herself concerned for " the square 
deal" of full human opportunity for the humblest private 
in the industrial army will not lack response to her gospel 
of the Eternal Life. As in Jesus' experience so the church 
will find that saving deeds must open the heart to saving 
truths. Look at what the church is doing in China and 
India to-day. We see the medical missionary by his cure 
of bodies winning entrance for the evangelist in the cure 



Address — Rev. James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. 57 

of souls. Do we not seem to hear the Master's words, 
"Go thou, and do hkewise' ? 

Some of our churches have rediscovered this primitive 
way, and are entering it successfully. For doing the same 
this church needs no better precedent than its own history. 
Here I recall the fact that, just before the old house 
burned, it was opened for the first of a series of meetings, 
which had to be continued elsewhere through the winter of 
1870-71 ; the object of which, as planned by the pastor, Mr. 
Joseph Cook, was to offer a free platform for the discussion 
of economic and other problems of special interest to 
operatives in the factories of Lynn. Such a precedent 
seems a clear call to this ancient church, to couple with its 
primacy of age in the Congregational brotherhood a pri- 
macy of effort to revive throughout its sphere of influence 
this truest imitation of Christ in his way of winning men's 
hearts to his religious lessons by his ministry to their nat- 
ural needs. It is the plain rule of common sense, that if 
we would draw men to interest themselves in what inter- 
ests us, we must first show interest in what interests them. 

Twenty-five years ago it was my privilege to assist in 
the celebration of your quarter-millenial anniversary. I 
treasure the remembrance of it. I prize the opportunity, 
again mine after the lapse of a quarter-century, to honor 
the bond of personal interest which links me to the church 
that initiated me into the cares and comforts of the gospel 
ministry. Twenty-five years hence, when its three hund- 
redth anniversary shall be celebrated, though I shall not 
be here, some of you, surviving then, and looking upon 



58 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

surrounding conditions much changed from the present, 
will recall the anticipations I utter to-day of the transition 
period we are entering. 

The prospect is not cloudless. Trustworthy readers of 
the signs of the times utter grave warnings. In the book 
advertisements for this month I find such titles as "Chris- 
tianity and the Social Crisis," " The Church and the Chang- 
ing Order" — books by eminent Christian teachers. 

The social suspicions and strifes that are rampant be- 
tween the " Haves" and the " Have-nots" are the inflam- 
matory symptoms of moral unsoundness in our social 
order. Lawlessness afflicts the land, and many are the 
prophets of evil. Whether such clouds are to burst into 
the tornado, or to melt away into the blue sky, depends 
now on the fidelity of the church of God to her supreme 
trust — to secure his righteousness between man and man, 
and in every man, both in social and in private life. Of 
this we see auspicious omens. In many a pulpit through- 
out the land the old prophetic fire is already kindled 
against wrongs that have grown rotten-ripe for judgment. 
A revival of the public conscience seems to have begun. 

Only let there be no half-way work for social righteous- 
ness. Then, twenty-five years hence, men shall look back 
on the monstrous evils that corrupt American life to-day, 
somewhat as we look back on the legalized barbarism 
that brought forth its fruit in " bleeding Kansas" and the 
battlefields of the Civil War. 

To-day is a day for us here to gird our spirits for the 
earnest but peaceful struggle that shall issue in a purified 
democracy, and in that ideal Commonwealth in which 
every altar of human need is served as an altar of God. 



READING OF SCRIPTURES. 

Rev. George W. Mansfield, Ivynn. 
Deuteronomy IV. 

1. Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes 
and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, 
that ye may Hve, and go in and possess the land which the 
Lord God of your fathers giveth you. 

2. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command 
you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may 
keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I 
command you. 

3. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of 
Baal-peor: for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the 
Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. 

4. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are 
alive every one of you this day. 

5. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, 
even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should 
do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. 

6. Keep therefore and do them : for this is your wis- 
dom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, 
which shall hear all these statutes, and say. Surely this 
great nation is a wise and understanding people. 

7. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so 
nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that 
we call upon him for ? 

8. And what nation is there so great, that hathstat- 



6o Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

utes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set 
before you this day? 

9. Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul dili- 
gently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have 
seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of 
thy life ; but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons : 

10. Specially the day that thou stoodest before the 
Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me. 
Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear 
my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that 
they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach 
their children. 

1 1 . And ye came near and stood under the mountain ; 
and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of 
heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. 

12. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of 
the fire : ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no sim- 
ilitude; only ye heard a voice. 

13. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he 
commanded you to perform even ten commandments; and 
he wrote them upon two tablets of stone. 

14. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach 
you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the 
land whither ye go over to possess it. 

15. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, for 
ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord 
spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire : 

16. Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven 
image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or 
female. 



Scriptures — Rev. George W. Mansfield 6i 

17. The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the 
likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air. 

18. The likeness of anything that creepeth on the 
ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters be- 
neath the earth: 

19. And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and 
when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even 
all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship 
them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath di- 
vided unto all nations under the whole heaven. 

20. But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you 
forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be 
unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 

C. J. H. WOODBtTRY, A.M., Sc.D. 
Chairman of the Anniversary Committee. 

IN COMMEMORATING two and three-quarters centuries 
of continued existence, this church, unchanged in de- 
nominational faith and site, celebrates an event which is 
not vouchsafed to any other church in this country. 

The change which denoted that indication of modern 
civilization in appreciating the advantages of specialized 
skill, appears to have been first shown by the separation of 
town and parish ; a momentous step in advance in Ameri- 
can history, which left the one to attend to the functions of 
civic government, and freed the church from the burden of 
secular authority, so that it could infuse its beneficent in- 
fluences over a wider scope, thereby acting with greater 
force in leading mankind towards better lives. 

History is frequently presented in such condensed narra- 
tive that merely names and dates are impressed on the 
mind, to the exclusion of far more important relations of 
movements to each other, and of their influences upon 
events which follow even at great distances. 

The Puritans were not of the peasantry but were among 
the most prosperous people of England, being possessed 
of material resources and imbued with that forceful intelli- 
gence which constitutes leadership in every community. 

Many of them were entitled to heraldic crests, to wear 
court dress and swords of ceremony, and there was a 



Address — C. J. H. Woodbury, Sc.D. 63 

greater proportion of " misters " among them than there 
is of the society of scholars in these days of fecund col- 
leges. 

While precise figures as to the amount of property that 
the head of a family should possess to join the colony can- 
not be stated, yet it is evident that he must be in liberal 
circumstances for those times; records show that furs, 
silk apparel and plate abounded in the Colony. 

At the time when this church was established, the wages 
of skilled mechanics in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay 
varied from fourteen pence to two shillings a day. Trans- 
portation across the sea was far more expensive than at 
present, and the entire outfit for the new homes must be 
brought by the colonists. 

It is true that they suffered during the early winters, but 
this was due to their ignorance of a severer climate than 
that of Old England, for which they were unprepared, and 
not on account of poverty ; there was indeed penury at a 
later date, but it occurred in the second generation. 

Their intellectual force is shown by the successful man- 
ner in which they applied the principles of law developed 
under generations of monarchies, to the solution of prob- 
lems of local self-government, and beyond that they 
initiated new functions of government, especially the 
written ballot, trade schools, free public education, town 
government, the separation of church and state, citizen 
militia, paper money, and the record of deeds and mort- 
gages, all of which has contributed to the establishment 
of this Republic as the most potent nation in the world. 

When anyone ignores the record of these pioneers whom 



64 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

Carlyle characterized as " the last of the heroisms," or 
beHttles their acts, he betrays the insignificance of his 
own origin. 

To these exercises commemorative of the deeds of our 
forbears, you are welcome, as you are always cordially wel- 
come here. 



Remarks — Chairman 65 



The Chairman: The duties which a man owes to the 
town he lives in, constitute responsibilities which have 
been met by one who has obeyed the calls of the people to 
the chief magistracy of this city, time and again. 

I have pleasure in introducing to you His Honor, Charles 
Neal Barney, Mayor of Lynn. 



ADDRESS 
THE PARISH AND THE COMMUNITY. 

His Honor Chari.es Neal Barney, A.B., LL.B., Mayor of Lynn. 

T BRING to this venerable religious society, this after- 
* noon, the greetings of the community that once, as a par- 
ish, maintained and supported this church. I do so in the 
full belief that every impartial member of this communi- 
ty, be he Orthodox or Liberal, Protestant or Catholic, Jew 
or Gentile, if he but be a student of American history, 
recognizes in this church of the Puritan fathers, the great 
custodian of the evolutionary processes of American lib- 
erties. Others will emphasize the religious history of this 
particular parish and perhaps of the great system of the 
Established Church in Massachusetts to which this society 
belonged. It is for me to speak of its connection with the 
civic life of Lynn. But it is impossible to do this without 
a brief glance at the origin of the church. 

The early settlers of Massachusetts were for the most 
part English Puritans. They bitterly complained of the 
intolerance of the Established Church of the mother 
country and came here to escape it, or, as the historians 
like to put it, "in order that they might worship God ac- 
cording to the dictates of their own consciences." Our 
English forbears have frequently been charged with lack- 
ing any real sense of humor. Had they possessed it, how- 
ever, it is perhaps too much to expect that in the Seven- 



Address — Hon. Charles Neal Barney 67 

teenth Century they would have appreciated how their 
inconsistencies would have appeared to their descendants ! 
Less than ten years after the first settlement of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Colony, there occurred in the synod of the 
churches held at Cambridge, an event which meant that in 
religion Massachusetts, the land of exile for the victims of 
English intolerance, was for two centuries to be equally as 
intolerant of any theology not approved by its founders 
and leaders. 

The Synod of 1637 sat for twenty-four days and when it 
adjourned had succeeded in recording eighty-two different 
forms of heresy existing in the Colony, "some blasphe- 
mous, others erroneous, and all unsafe." Two months 
later, probably in the same Cambridge meeting-house, oc- 
curred the trial of Anne Hutchinson, the arch heretic, and 
as the result of a proceeding undoubtedly extra-judicial, 
she was banished from the Colony. In summing up the 
case, Governor Winthrop, who presided at the trial, defined 
her offence and the policy of the Colony when he said, 
" Your course is not to be suffered * * * * ^e see not that 
any should have authority to set up any other exercises 
besides which authority has already set up." In other 
words there had become an Established Church in Massa- 
chusetts, which continued nearly two hundred years, until 
1833. This parish was the official church of Lynn and 
continued to be so. 

I claim blood descent from the first minister of this so- 
ciety, and most of you here this afternoon claim the theo- 
logical heritage of this church as yours. Of the early the- 
ology it is not fitting that I should speak. But neither 



68 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

filial respect nor even patriotism has any place in the judg- 
ment of the history of our forbears. We are not respon- 
sible for the short-comings of our ancestors, nor is it to our 
credit they did well some of the things they had to do. 
The student of history seeks for cause and effect, and hav- 
ing found these he holds them as bits of the Eternal Truth, 
for the use of which in the future he is responsible. 

Now it is perfectly apparent that in this community 
there was an almost anomalous condition, difficult of ex- 
planation and yet not to be disputed. I refer to the con- 
dition which resulted from the requirement of strictest 
conformity to the Established Church in religious matters, 
but permitted the utmost liberality in the ideals and prac- 
tices of government. 

There was absolute domination by the clergy in early 
Massachusetts. The resulting over-insistence upon the 
importance of theological discussion served to make all 
literature and all thinking, for the first one hundred and 
fifty years of the life of the Colony, a useless and never- 
ending controversy about theology, with little insistence 
upon the fruits of religion. Cotton Mather's " Magnalia," 
the works of Jonathan Edwards, and Wigglesworth's 
poem, entitled, "The Day of Doom," in which the Al- 
mighty is pictured as explaining to unregenerate infants, 
confined in " the easiest room in Hell," why it is impudent 
of them to expect anything better — these represent the 
best literary efforts in an age that, in the mother coun- 
try, produced that group of brilliant writers and thinkers 
beginning with Milton and ending with Johnson. 

But the clergy of early Massachusetts not only domi- 



Address — Hon. Charles Neal Barney 69 

nated the literature and general thought of the time, but 
the civic life as well. And here is the anomaly. In other 
lines of thought the clergy had stood for repression ; in the 
growth of civil liberty, however, in the development of the 
principle of human equality before the law, the clergy and 
people of this Colony played a highly creditable part. 
And after all, human equality was a much more novel prop- 
osition in the history of civilization than was religious tol- 
eration, which had found frequent expression from age to 
age in different lands and among divers people. 

The ministers, Samuel Whiting and Jeremiah Shepard, 
were by far the most influential and important men in 
Lynn in the Seventeenth Century, as Cotton and Increase 
Mather were in the Colony. The first body of laws was 
drawn by Rev. Nathaniel Ward of Agawam, in 1641, and 
by him annotated with frequent references to the Scrip- 
tures. No great public questions were settled, or even 
considered, without the counsel of the clergy. 

The leaders of thought in Massachusetts had brought 
with them the seed of that social and political truth for 
which the English Commonwealth later stood and of which 
Milton and Cromwell were the great English exponents. 
The traditions of all civilization proved to be against the 
persistence of any theory of social equality in England. 
With the accession of Charles II to the throne, the Com- 
monwealth became a mere incident. But the seed that 
was transplanted to Massachusetts found lodgment in dif- 
ferent soil. It has been said by some that industrial con- 
ditions in the New World made an actual equality that 
hastened the acceptance of the theory of equality. To 



70 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

refute this suggestion we have but to contrast the develop- 
ment of ideals in Massachusetts and in Virginia, and to 
reflect that Massachusetts had practically settled in 1780 
great principles that were only established in Virginia in 
1865. The spirit of the laws drawn by the Agawam min- 
ister and the development of the town meeting in New 
England had paved the way for Democracy. And in the 
town meeting as in everything else the church was the pre- 
dominating factor. 

It is true that as late as 1772 the catalogue of Harvard 
College gave special prominence to the names of the 
sons of certain families in the Colonies, and that after the 
organization of the Supreme Court in this State, that 
august body held that the description of a gentleman in a 
writ, as a "yeoman," was cause for the abatement of the 
writ. But despite these occasional reminders of an old 
system, by the outbreak of the Revolution, human 
equality before the law had reached in Massachusetts a 
full acceptance never before accorded it in the world. 
During the period of its evolution. New England had 
been absolutely dominated by the church of the Puritans. 

The closing quarter of the Third Century of this society 
finds its relation to the community far different from that 
in its earlier days. Men and women strong in the faith of 
the fathers still come here in goodly numbers to worship 
and to receive the message from their minister. But no 
longer does the parish number every member of the com- 
munity, nor is membership in the church a pre-requisite 
for voting for officers of the civil government; no longer 
does this church or any church, or all the churches, dom- 



Address — Hon. Charles Neal Barney 71 

inate the social, educational, philanthropic and civic life of 
the people of the Third Plantation ; no longer do discus- 
sions of immaterial theological questions absorb the best 
energies and attentions of the people. Some good people 
profess to believe that these changes mean the loss of the 
usefulness of the church, and that the end of the Third 
Century will see this ancient organization with little of its 
former prowess. 

To all such let me say, as I believe this community in its 
moments of deepest thought would have me say, that in 
the new adjustment of social affairs, in the broader spirit 
of co-operation between men, in the greater toleration of 
the beliefs of others, in the widening influence of organi- 
zations that now do what the church formerly did in the 
way of benevolence and education, there is opportunity 
for the evolution of the church to larger rather than to 
lesser responsibilities. As the horizons of men grow 
broader and their activities become greater, it is absolutely 
essential to the progress of the race and the maintenance 
of the social order, that the hold men have upon Eternal 
Truth shall be stronger and their visions of the Perfect 
Life clearer and more effective. 

In the year 1907, in the City of Lynn, this church still 
bears a relation to the civic life that no man has a right to 
underestimate. In this day when human ingenuity has 
placed at our command forces of nature not dreamed of a 
century ago, we boast of our industries and our prosperity 
and, alas, too often count our success by accumulated 
wealth! The life of this church has covered a period of 
remarkable advance and has contributed much to the 



72 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

progress of our great city and to the ideals of Democracy 
in America. But, fellow citizens, is it any insignificant 
task to endeavor to hold the vantage ground in civilization 
that we have already attained? Are the temptations of 
men any less compelling than those of two centuries ago? 
Are the needs of men for spiritual consolation and uplift 
any the less urgent? The Christian Church may no longer 
speak to the community with the voice of organized au- 
thority as it spoke in the Seventeenth Century. But it 
does speak through the life of the individual and furnishes 
the incentive in every great struggle after truth. Its mes- 
sage is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; but it 
must always be interpreted in the light of the Eternal Pres- 
ent. 



'T is as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves 
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, 
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime; 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men be- 
hind their time? 
Turn those tracks towards Past or Future, that make Ply- 
mouth Rock sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, 
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; 
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath 

made us free. 
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits 

flee 
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across 

the sea. 



Address — Hon. Charles Neal Barney 73 

*' New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good un- 
couth; i^j> 

They must upward still and onward that^ould keep abreast 
of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp fires! We ourselves must Pil- 
grims be, 

Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly thro' the desperate 
winter sea, 

Nor^y the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." 



<^ 



'•^' 



74 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 



The Chairman: A counselor learned in the law, who 
has graced the bench, an honored public servant of both 
City and Commonwealth, also a profound investigator into 
the deeds of the past, which he has recorded in English pure 
and undefiled, is worthy of the homage of his townspeople. 

It is my privilege to introduce to you the Honorable 
Nathan Mortimer Hawkes, who represents the Lynn His- 
torical Society, which is believed to be the largest local 
organization of the kind in this country. 




Second Meeting House. 



Called the Old Tunnel on aecount of the roof of its cupola. It set on the Common 
on a line diajionally from the present meeting house towards Whiting Street. Built 
1682 from timber cut in Meeting House Swamp in the Lynn Woods Altered in 1716. 
by porches, oak pulpit and sounding board imported from England. In 1737, new 
roof and other repairs cost £464-12-5. In 1771, four gables taken down and the 
■' ornament " built over the bell, giving the building its time-honored nickname. 
Original bell unknown; second bell imported from England 1699, was cracked in cele- 
brating the peace of Ghent and the battle of New Orleans, the news of both reaching 
Lynn at 10 a.m., Feb. 13. 1815. Bell recast by Paul Revere <fe Son, November, 1816. 
Cracked by fire alarm and recast by William Blake, 1878. 

It was moved, in the Spring of 1827, to tlie Parsonage lot corner South Common 
and Commercial Streets, where it was rebuilt. 



There is no authentic picture of the first meeting house which was east of Shepard 
Street at the rear of 244 Summer Street. Lewis states that it was moved to the Com- 
mon and formed a portion of the second church. Moulton claims that it was moved 
and formed a portion of the Alley house on Harbor Street, which was torn down in 1896. 



THE PARTING OF THE WAYS BETWEEN 
PARISH AND TOWN. 

Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes. 

Representing The Lynn Historical Society. 

ONE standing in the House of Worship of the First 
Parish and Church of Lynn, naturally seeks to prove 
kinship and connection with them. I submit the follow- 
ing evidence of my right to be here to-day. 

Church and State, with our fathers, were so intimately 
blended that seats in the church were assigned in Town 
meeting. Those who, from worldly position or spiritual 
leadership, were deemed worthy of special positions were 
selected by the Town ; the remainder of the people (for at- 
tendance at church was compulsory) were arranged by a 
committee, as will be seen by the following extracts from 
the Town records, 1692, January 8: 

"The town did vote that Lieut. Fuller, Lieut. Lewis, 
Mr. John Hawkes, senior, Francis Burrill, Lieut. Burrill, 
John Burrill, Jr., Mr. Henry Rhodes, Quartermaster Bas- 
sett, Mr. Haberfield, Cornet Johnson, Mr. Bailey and 
Lieut. Blighe should sit at the table." 

" It was voted that Matthew Farrington, senior, Henry 
Silsbee and Joseph Mansfield, senior, should sit in the 
deacons' seat." 

" It was voted that Thomas Farrar, senior, Chrispus 
Brewer, Allen Breed, senior, Clement Coldam, Robert 



76 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

Rand, senior, Jonathan Hudson, Richard Hood, senior, 
and Sergeant Haven, should sit in the pulpit." 

" The town voted that them that are surviving, that was 
chosen by the town a committee to erect the meeting- 
house, and Clark Potter to join along with them, should 
seat the inhabitants of the town in the meeting-house, 
both men and women, and appoint what seats they shall 
sit in, but it is to be understood that they are not to seat 
neither the table, nor the deacons' seat, nor the pulpit, but 
them to sit there as are voted by the town." 

In the list of the elders authorized to sit at the table in 
the House of Worship and the Council House of the whole 
people appears the name of my ancestor, the son of the 
immigrant first-comer. 

The date is the year when the Old Tunnel was only ten 
years from its building and the year of the arrival of the 
Provincial Charter of William and Mary and many years 
before the West End became the Third Parish. 

I am here, however, not on account of ancestry, but be- 
cause I have made a study of the local conditions attend- 
ing evolution of the Town from the Parish. 

The scope of our theme this afternoon does not touch 
the great struggles in New England churches in the 
early years of the Nineteenth Century from which 
this church and parish came out as a brand saved from 
the burning. It does not deal with the legal nor 
ecclesiastical phases of the same period, but is an un- 
varnished recital of some matter-of-fact happenings of the 
good people of Lynn of that time. The matter was drawn 
to my attention by reading in Alonzo Lewis' first 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 77 

edition of his " History of Lynn " under date of 1805, the 
following : 

"For one hundred and seventy-three years, from the 
building of the first parish meeting-house, the people had 
annually assembled in it for the transaction of their 
municipal concerns. But this year, the members of that 
parish observing the damage which such meetings occa- 
sioned to the house, and believing that, since the incorpo- 
ration of other parishes, the town had no title in it, refused 
to have it occupied as a town-house. This refusal occa- 
sioned much controversy between the town and parish, 
and committees were appointed by both parties to accom- 
plish an adjustment. An engagement was partially made 
for the occupation of the house, on the payment of twen- 
ty-eight dollars annually ; but the town refused to sanction 
the agreement, and the meetings were removed to the 
Methodist meeting-house, on the eastern part of the com- 
mon." 

This statement unabridged and unenlarged upon stands 
in each subsequent edition of Lewis and of Newhall. If 
the records of the Parish and Town had been written out 
fully, there would have been much of historical interest in 
the dramatic ending of the Puritan problem of a union of 
Church and State, Parish and Town, in Lynn. A peculiar 
circumstance connected with the printed annals of Lynn 
is the fact that two men, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Newhall, who 
did so much to elucidate our history,were not in touch with 
that amazing religious reformation which created the 
short-lived Commonwealth of England and the enduring 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While each was loyal 



yS Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

to his native Town, each was proud of his connection with 
the church, the protesting against conformity with which 
was the moving cause of the settHng of Massachusetts. 
If our historian had been a Congregationahst, either 
Unitarian or Trinitarian, he would have found a theme of 
interest in tracing the sequence of events which led to 
this controversy. 

The theory of the Puritan planters was that the fee of 
all lands was in the Company,* and that grants for planta- 
tions were made for the settlement of a Parish, and inci- 
dentally for the civil concerns of such Parish. A prime 
concern of the Parish and its creature the Town was the 
support of the ministry. Hence the Town in granting to 
individuals made it a condition that all the land should 
bear its share in the common burdens of the Town, an im- 
portant item of which was the ministry. 

Rev. Dr. Parsons Cooke in the most pungent and brilliant 
polemical work ever written in Lynn said : 

" This was the obligation which lay upon the land, a re- 
serve tacitly made in the original grant, and which could 
not be nullified in passing from one owner to another. It 
was a condition in the deed which bound and attached it 
to the titles of all future owners." 

The Puritan plan of carrying on all affairs ecclesiastic 
and civic in the Parish seems to have worked without fric- 
tion in Lynn until the Colonial Charter was abrogated and 

• The Company in this connection means the organized body of Puritan leaders in 
England, to whom, on the 4th day of March, 1628-9, in the fourth year of the reign 
of Charles I, "The Charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England 
Twas granted." 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 79 

the usurpation of Sir Edmund Andros had been ended and 
the Provincial Charter was in full force. For nearly a 
hundred years the Puritan Theocracy had dominated New 
England. Great changes took place in the era of the Pro- 
vincial Charter and of the Royal Governors. 

The meeting-house (not the first meeting-house but the 
first erected on the Common) had been built by assessment 
upon all the acres of the whole Town in 1682. 

In spite of the locating of new parishes and the setting 
up of rival denominations, the meeting-house of the First 
Parish was the place of meeting for all purposes of the 
Town for one hundred and seventy-three years, as Mr. 
Lewis recorded. 

The first break in the Parish was a legitimate one even 
from the Puritan standpoint. It was a long distance for 
the farmers of Lynn End, or Lynnfield, to travel to wor- 
ship on Lynn Common in the short winter days when they 
frequently had more severe snow storms than we have 
seen. 

Recognizing this stumbling block in the way of proper 
observance of the Lord's day, the Town voted, November 
17, 1712: 

" In answer to the petition of our neighbors, the farmers, 
so-called, dated Feb. 13, 171 1, desiring to be a precinct, 
that all the part of the Town that lies on the northerly 
side of that highway that leads from Salem to Reading be 
set off for a precinct, and when they shall have a meeting- 
house and a minister, qualified according to law, settled to 
preach the word of God amongst them, then they shall be 
wholly freed from paying to the ministry of the Town and 
not before. And if afterwards they shall cease to main- 



8o Two Hundred Seveniy-fijth Anniversary 

tain a minister amongst them then to pay to the minister 
of the Town as heretofore." 

The conditions of the above vote were comphed with 
and in 1720 Lynnfield became a Precinct and the Second 
Parish of Lynn, and exempt from paying to the minor- 
ity of the Town. 

The first aHen denomination to set up a meeting was 
in the troubled time of Andros. On the i8th of 5th 
month, 1689, the Friends held their first monthly meeting 
at Lynn. They had previously, in 1678, erected a meet- 
ing-house on Wolf Hill, on what is now Broad Street, upon 
the land still owned by the Society. 

The incursion of the Quakers was the first serious men- 
ace of the Puritan domination and the most serious till 
the advent of Methodism a century later. Of the good 
sense of the Parish in this matter Dr. Cooke says : 

"The friction engendered by the requirement that all 
the Colonists should be taxed to support the ministry was 
one of the greatest sources of disaster to the Puritan cause. 
But the Parish in Lynn took early measures to mitigate the 
evils of this law, and so far to relax its force as to maintain 
good neighborhood with the Quakers. In the year 1722 
they voted : 

"The Parish considering that sundry of our neighbors 
called Quakers, who have in times past requested to be 
dismissed from paying taxes to our minister, Rev. Nathan- 
iel Henchman, which in some respects hath been granted 
— but now our Parish observing said Quakers frequently 
purchasing lands, that have usually paid to the support of 
our minister in times past, and under like obHgation with 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 8i 

our other lands to pay to the maintenance of our minister 
— wherefore, voted, that all the lands belonging to said 
Parish, purchased by said Quakers (not meaning one of 
another) since the settlement of our present minister, as 
also all other ratable lands, in whose hands soever, shall 
for the future pay to said Parish, excepting only such lands 
and estates of the several Quakers hereafter named, now 
freed from paying to the Parish the present year, and the 
same to be at the discretion of the Parish, from year to 
year, whether to pay or not." 

Then follows a list of fifteen persons that were exem^pt. 
Similar votes, exempting individuals in about the same 
number, were passed from year to year for several years. 
From this it seems that it had been the custom before this 
to exempt individuals to some extent. 

The Society of Friends, considering its antagonistic 
origin, has little to complain of Puritan intolerance in 
Lynn. The Friends were thrifty and were adroit manipu- 
lators of men. They not only secured an exemption of 
their lands from contribution towards support of the min- 
istry, but they exhibited a juggling feat with the schools 
such as no other society here ever approached. 

Wherever in this country the Roman Catholics have 
asked for a division of school funds, the Protestants have 
with one accord sounded the tocsin of alarm. 

The early Friends in the reign of Charles the Second, 
through the friendship between James, Duke of York, and 
William Penn, had a suspiciously close bond of union with 
the Catholics in their common dislike of Puritanism. The 
intervening centuries have broken down the barriers of 



82 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

sect and good men of the Twentieth Century can look back 
to the Seventeenth with charity and respect for their for- 
bears of the parent stock whatever pecuHarity of creed 
they affected. 

Both Friends and Roman Catholics have always pro- 
fessed a strong desire for a guarded religious training for 
the young of their sects. Later developments reveal how 
in the fulness of time this scheme worked in Lynn. 

In a paper on the " Origin of Quakerism," prepared by 
Samuel Boyce, it is related : 

" In 1 784 application was made to the Selectmen of Lynn 
for the proportion of the money which Friends were an- 
nually paying for the support of the public schools to be 
refunded to them, in order that it might be used towards 
defraying the expenses of their own school. Objections 
were at first made to this request but after some time had 
elapsed Friends were allowed to draw back annually a por- 
tion of this money for that purpose. The school was con- 
tinued about forty years, and this privilege was granted 
them most of the time." 

Not only were the Friends allowed their proportion of the 
school fund, but they were (as a Society) permitted to choose 
members of the School Committee, and were wherever 
they lived a School Ward of the Town by themselves. 

Thus was established a full-fledged and original Parochial 
School on the soil of Puritan Lynn. 

The Methodists attempted the same Parochial project, 
but in Town Meeting, Feb. 23, 1792, it was voted "That 
the Methodists do not draw their part of the school money 
back.' 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 83 

In 1 82 1 the Friends' Parochial School was done away 
with by a vote " That the Town be redistricted anew, as it 
respects the several schools without any regard to any par- 
ticular religious society." 

It was not till the close of Rev. Jeremiah Shepard's 
happy and united pastorate of forty-one years that the 
First Parish and the people of Lynn realized that the 
golden age of the Puritan Theocracy had passed — that 
the ecclesiastical and civil concerns of the whole people 
were not within the scope of the First Parish. 

Lynnfield had become an independent Parish, and 
the Friends within the territory of the First Parish 
had become land-owners exempt from Parish taxes and 
voters in Town meetings. The most laconic and yet 
comprehensive statement of the actual divorce of Parish 
and Town is to be found in Dr. Cooke's "Centuries" (p. 
196): 

"Several noteworthy events affecting the Parish took 
place during Mr. Henchman's ministry. The next year 
after his settlement, that is, 1 72 1 , the Parish ceased to have 
its business done in Town meeting. The separation was 
effected on this wise: At a Town meeting there was an 
adjournment of Town business for half an hour to give the 
members of the Parish time for preliminary action. Then 
in a meeting ordered by those of the Selectmen belonging 
to the Parish, a vote of members of the Parish was 
passed, ordering Richard Johnson and Theophilus Burrill 
to call a Parish meeting for organizing. The meeting was 
called, and a hundred voters attended and unanimously 
concurred in the proceedings." 

Dr. Cooke is so confident in his facts that he does not 



84 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

trouble himself with giving authorities that might lighten 
the labors of later gleaners in the local historical field, 
hence it was a pleasing surprise to find that his statement 
was an almost exact transcript of the record of the Town 
Meeting held March 5, 1721-22. That event, so tersely 
recorded, was one of the milestones in our history. It 
marked the close of a century of homogeneous Colonial 
life under the teachings of pure Calvinism expounded by 
Whiting, Cobbet and Shepard. 

The Town record was made as if an ordinary event was 
chronicled. Very few, if any, more striking and pregnant 
happenings ever took place within the walls of the Old 
Tunnel Meeting-house. The record was coolly made. The 
actors so far as we know were as " impassive as the marble 
in the quarry," utterly unconscious of the passing of the 
Puritan idea and the incoming of the modern Town Meet- 
ing, divested of all ecclesiastical, and clothed with only 
civic powers. 

On the surface it would appear that this separation 
should include a discontinuance of the use of the meeting- 
house for the transaction of Town business. On the con- 
trary, the Town used the building in all its official affairs 
for more than three-quarters of a century after this time. 
Within its homely walls men of the First Parish, Friends, 
the voters of Lynnfield and of Saugus debated and made 
appropriations for Town purposes while much history was 
making itself. 

The great Provincial feat of arms — the capture of 
Louisburg (the French Gibraltar in America) — by 
Massachusetts soldiers and sailors in 1745, happened 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 85 

while the Old Tunnel remained the Council House of the 
Town. 

Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, the War of the Revo- 
lution, the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the Pres- 
idency of Washington and of the elder Adams and other 
marvelous events occurred while the village Solons con- 
tinued there to discuss problems of social life. 

Three generations walked up and down the sombre 
aisles ere the friction between Parish and Town became 
apparent, which resulted, in 1806, in the abandonment by 
or the expulsion of the Town from the meeting-house. 

In order to show the tense relations of the people — the 
conservative clinging of the towns-people to the old house 
even after they had forsaken the faith therein preached — 
some reports and votes have been culled from the records. 
Only a small fraction of the voluminous records is copied, 
and that not consecutively, but barely enough to give a 
hint of the importance of the issue in the minds of the 
fathers. First we copy from the Parish Records. By the 
Parish Records it will be seen that the Parish in the begin- 
ning of the contention did not absolutely bar the Town 
from its house, but simply insisted that it should only be 
used in rotation with the other meeting-houses in Town — 
that is, that the hitherto undivided burden of the Parish in 
providing shelter for the Town should be divided and borne 
in part by the other societies. 

March 20, 1805, the Parish 

" Voted that the Town shall not in the future hold their 
Town meetings in the First Parish meeting-house only in 
rotation, and the April meeting to be considered as one. 



86 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

" Voted that the Parish Committee be directed to notify 
the Selectmen of this vote." 

Jan. 9, 1806: 

"Voted to accept of the report of their committee, 
which is as follows, viz. : The Parish, at their meeting in 
March last, voted that it was not their choice that the 
Town should hold any Town meeting in future in the said 
Parish meeting-house unless by rotation in the several 
meeting-houses in Town, and that the meeting in April then 
next ensuing might be holden in said house as the first in 
rotation — the meeting was accordingly held in said 
house, and in May following, the Town voted that their 
meeting should be holden in rotation in the several meet- 
ing-houses in Town. 

" The Selectmen of the Town now ask leave of the First 
Parish to hold their next Town Meeting in their meeting- 
house as the first meeting in the rotation. Although the 
Parish conceive that they have already taken their turn 
yet they are willing to sacrifice their own private interest 
and feelings, and submit to a partial evil for the general 
good, it is therefore voted that the Town be permitted to 
hold their next meeting in the said house as the first in the 
rotation. Provided that the next meeting be holden and 
finished previously to the first day of March next. 

Signed by the Committee, 

James Gardner. 
Wm. Mansfield. 
Fred Breed. 
Thomas Rhodes. 
Charles Newhall." 

Jan. 16, 1806. 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 87 

Jan. 30, 1806: 

"Voted that the Parish Committee be a committee to 
appear at the adjournment of the Town meeting and for- 
bid the Town in the name and behalf of the First Parish, 
of ever holding any Town Meeting in said Parish Meeting- 
house in future unless by the consent of the said Parish. 

" Voted that the Clerk serve the Town with a copy of the 
above vote." 

Gleanings from the Town Records. 

"The undersigned, a committee chosen by the Town to 
treat with a committee from the First Parish in Lynn in 
order to effect a settlement of a dispute that has arisen 
relative to the right claimed by the Town to transact their 
public business in the old meeting-house, so-called, report 
that they have the mortification to learn that the Parish 
has declined to unite with the Town in this pacific measure. 
But although the conduct of the Parish in this respect 
may appear to close the door against all further attempts 
of the Town towards a compromise, nevertheless, when 
we recollect that some of the proceedings of our last meet- 
ing however well intended or proper in themselves, give 
umbrage to many of our brethren of the Parish as being 
in their opinion calculated to prevent a reconcihation, and 
although we are compelled in justice to the Town to declare 
that we view the measures as respects their appointment 
of a committee as sufficient evidence of the Town's accom- 
modating disposition, and that the omission of the Town 
through mistake to invest them with power to treat, etc., 
does not in the least weaken or impair that evidence, never- 
theless, we, the Town, in the spirit of charity and candor 
will give the complaints of the Parish before hinted all 
that weight they may desire, that we take leave further to 
recommend that in order to evidence beyond a doubt that 



88 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

the Town are still desirous to promote concord and har- 
mony between them and their brethren of the Parish, and 
to avoid the manifold evils of a contest in law, where the 
interest of the parties are so connected and blended that 
however decided in law will, in addition to an enormous 
expense, be attended with far more pernicious conse- 
quences, when fellow citizens of the same Town, the same 
neighborhood, family connections, near relatives, etc., will 
be enclosed in an unhappy quarrel which in the nature of 
things will give strength to those discordant passion 
which are the baneful source of human misery. 

"As a means to avoid these accumulated evils and to 
establish tranquility among all classes of our fellowtown's- 
men, your committee respectfully submit for your consid- 
eration, whether it would not be best for the Town by Re- 
solve by vote, that we are still ready to listen to any pro- 
posals from the Parish that may tend towards an amicable 
settlement of this unhappy dispute. 

Joseph Fuller, 
Henry Burchstead, 
Nathan Hawkes, 
Rich'd Shute, 
Timothy Munroe, 
Mica'h Newhall, 

Lynn, Feb. g, j8o6. Committee. 

The warrant for Town Meeting, dated March 7, 1806, 
contained this article : 

" Also to determine what further measures are necessary 
for the Town to adopt to support and establish a privilege 
of meeting in the old meeting-house which they and their 
fathers have ever heretofore enjoyed and to determine 
where the next meeting shall be called." 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 89 

Town Meeting, March 17, 1806: 

"Voted to refer the determination of the matter of 
right of meeting in the old meeting-house to the adjourn- 
ment of this meeting, and the Town are ready to meet the 
Parish by their committee to compromise the business." 

Under same date the next action was : 

"Voted the Selectmen apply to the Methodist Society 
for their house to hold the April meeting in. 

"Voted to adjourn this meeting to the place where the 
April meeting shall be held." 

The warrant for the Annual Meeting for the choice of 
State Officers for 1 806 began as follows : 

"The freeholders and other inhabitants of the Town of 
Lynn qualified as the law requires, are hereby notified to 
attend a Town Meeting to be holden at the Methodist 
meeting-house in said Town on Monday the 7th day of 
April next at i o'clock P.M. 

Henry Hai^lowei^l, 
Henry Oliver, 
Nathan Hawkes, 

dated — Selectmen. 

Lynn, March 28, 1S06. 

Lynn, April 7, 1806: 

"Met agreeable to notification. At this meeting it 
was voted to choose a committee for the purpose of 
filling up the blanks for a compromise with the old Parish, 
relative to the Town's using the old meeting-house, and to 
report at May meeting. 

"Voted, Zachariah Attwill, Samuel Collins, Abner 
Cheever and Thomas Mansfield be said committee. 



90 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

" Voted, the Selectmen provide a house for May meeting 
at the Town's expense." 

May 1, 1806: 

"The Selectmen issue the warrant for Town meeting 
for choice of Representatives to General Court to be 
held in the old meeting-house, May 12, 1806." 

This report was made at the meeting : 

"As it appears to be the wish of both Town and Parish 
to have the unhappy dispute between the Town and First 
Parish respecting the old meeting-house amicably adjusted 
the following is submitted to the Town for their considera- 
tion ; it is thought it will meet the views of both parties. 

"The Town cannot comply with the proposition of the 
Parish as offered to the Town's committee. 

" But the Town are willing to relinquish all their right in 
the said house on the following considerations, viz. : 

" I. The Town shall have leave to transact all munici- 
pal business in the said house as usual. 

"2. The Town shall sweep said house and if necessary 
wash it as soon as may be after each meeting. 

"3. The Town shall make good all damages which the 
house shall sustain by such meeting as soon as may be 
after each meeting, and in case of any dispute the Town 
shall choose one man and the Parish one, who shall be 
arbitrators to fix sd damage. 

" 4. The Town shall pay the Parish Treasurer annually 
the sum of dollars as the Town's proportion of the 

general repairs in and on the house. 

"5. This stipulation shall continue in force for the 
term of years. 

"The committee appointed on the part of the Town at 
their meeting on the 7th of April, have met with the com- 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 91 

mittee on the part of the First Parish and have agreed to 
fill up the blanks left within the proposals as follows, viz. : 
the blank for compensation to be filled with twenty-eight 
dollars per annum and the blank for the number of years 
filled at twenty years. 

" And the same is submitted to the Town and Parish. 

"Lynn, April 2S, 1806. 

Zac'h Attwill, Fred'k Breed, 

Sam'l Collins, Thomas Rhodes, 

Abner Cheever, Will'm Mansfield, 

Thomas Mansfield, Eph'm Breed, 

on the part of the Town. on the part of the Parish.^' 

" Voted by the Town on the 12 of this instant May to re- 
ject the above report." 

The next warrant for Town Meeting was issued Jan. 10, 
1807, and the place of meeting was the Methodist meeting- 
house. 

At the April meeting, 1807, there was allowed: 

"For the use and repairs of the Methodist meeting- 
house $42.25. 

N.B. — The above sum included nineteen dollars paid 
to Col. Breed and Harris Chadwell for the use and repairs 
of the old meeting-house." 

These excerpts from musty records may serve as sleep- 
ing potions to people not fascinated by our local annals, 
but they are of value as throwing a flash-light upon the 
scenes of earlier days, and gives a more life-like picture 
than any rhetorical attempt. 

After the disuse of the Meeting-house by the Town in 



92 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

1806, the Parish used it for its purposes on the Common till 
1827, when the Parish, aided by neighboring churches and 
the Town, under the deft management of Captain Joseph 
Lloyd, removed the frame of the old house to the corner 
of South Common and Commercial Streets and a new cov- 
ering was given to the old timbers, which had originally 
been primeval oaks grown in the Meeting-house swamp in 
Lynn Woods. 

In the rebuilt house Dr. Cooke preached his first sermon 
here on the first Sabbath of March, 1836, and was installed 
May 4, of the same year. Soon after, the church upon this 
spot was erected ; but this is the story of later days, and a 
digression from the text. 

In 1806, as well as in 1721, the irritating element which 
caused the First Parish to close its doors upon the Town 
may be traced to ecclesiastical origin. 

The Quakers and the several Parishes could legislate in 
peace with the Parish in the old house. A more aggressive 
sect had come to Town and pitched its tent within sight of 
the Old Tunnel. 

Benjamin Johnson, a prominent man — a leader in the 
development of the shoe business and a member of the 
First Church — had heard and been impressed with Metho- 
dist preaching in the South. 

Mr. Johnson invited Jesse Lee, the Methodist preacher, 
to come here. Lee arrived on the fourteenth of December, 
1790. Since that day Methodism has been a particularly 
active and vital power in Lynn. Mr. Lee set up his church 
— militant — in the houses of Mr. Johnson and of Mr. 
Enoch Mudge, the one at the north end of Market Street, 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 93 

the other at the corner of South Common and Vine Streets. 
One was east and the other was west of the old meeting- 
house, so that he flanked the Parish. 

The house of Enoch Mudge stood upon the site of the 
edifice in which we meet to-day and which has long been 
your place of worship. 

As Shakespeare says, " Thus the whirligig of time brings 
in his revenges." 

Sometimes he was permitted to occupy the meeting- 
house for evening meetings, and when this was refused, the 
Methodists, on the fourteenth day of June, 1791, began to 
build the first meeting-house of their society just in front 
of what is now Lee Hall. In twelve days from the time 
the timber was cut, we are told the house was ready for 
occupancy. It was a plain, unfinished building, 34 by 44 
feet. It stood out in full view of the First Parish Meet- 
ing-house, and a few years later it became a convenient 
shelter for Town Meetings, when the First Parish ejected 
the Town from the Old Tunnel. Thereafter, with occa- 
sional meetings at the hall of Paul and Ellis Newhall, at 
the corner of Market and Essex Streets, it was occupied by 
the grace of the Methodist Society for Town purposes, till 
the erection of the Town House on the Common in 18 14. 

There are two sides to every shield. 

The freemen of the Town claimed that they and their 
fathers had always used the meeting-house, that a tax 
upon the whole property had erected the building and had 
maintained it, and that consequently they and their suc- 
cessors had a prescriptive right to enjoy the same privi- 
leges. At the time of the controversy the First Parish 



94 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

was in a dire plight. Its pastor, Rev. Thomas Gushing 
Thacher, lacked the power of his predecessors; he had not 
the gifts of solidity and earnestness, his intellectual parts 
were not equal to that of the family to which he belonged. 
The functions of his sacred office were not appreciated by 
him, and secular afifairs engrossed his mind.* Mr. Thach- 
er's ministry extended from 1794 to 18 13. 

His immediate predecessor. Rev. Obadiah Parsons, had 
faults even more inconsistent with his profession than 
those of Mr. Thacher. 

With such guides it is not strange that Jesse Lee's ear- 
nestness and his fiery preaching made the new sect popular, 
A large portion of the First Parish went over to the Meth- 
odists. Even the deacons of the Parish, William Far- 
rington and Theophilus Hallo well, joined the new move- 
ment and carried away the communion plate of the Parish, 
probably under the impression that where the deacons 
were there was the church. Over the carrying away of 
the communion service a long contention was had, which 
resulted in its return; with it Deacon Farrington came 
back. 

According to the opinion of those who remained in the 
Parish, those who left had abandoned the faith taught by 
the founders, and in forming an alien church they had for- 
feited their rights in the old meeting-house. 

To the Parish it seemed unfair that men who worshipped 
elsewhere should seek to retain a secular control over the 
meeting-house. Hence the denial of its use by the Parish 



* "But the people heard from him some excellent sermons — even some of the 
same that had been preached by his father before him." 



Address — Hon. Nathan Mortimer Hawkes 95 

— the appointment of a joint committee — the compro- 
mise agreed to by the committee recognizing the right of 
the Parish to receive compensation for its use and the re- 
fusal of the Town to accept the compromise. 

The Parish was weak in numbers, but by the vote of its 
enemies its contention was maintained that secular as well 
as ecclesiastical use of its property was in the Parish, and 
that the title to the Old Tunnel was in those who main- 
tained the faith of the fathers in years of disaster as well 
as of prosperity. 

The First Parish of Lynn is the oldest organization of 
man, apart from the family relation, of the ancient Town, 
and as you properly claim, the oldest Puritan Church in 
America to remain practically upon its original site, and so 
far as a layman can say, it still professes and practises the 
truth as taught by the saintly Whiting, Cobbet and Shep- 
ard. 



96 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 



The Chairman: The maxim, "in essentials unity, in 
non-essentials liberty — in all things charity,"* indicates 
the fundamental principles governing the cordial relations 
existing between the sister churches of our city ; on whose 
behalf we will hear from Rev. Frank W. Padelford, Minister 
of the Washington Street Baptist Church. 



*" Innccessariisunitas.indubiislibertas, in omnibus caritas," is sculptured in the 
stone over a doorway leading into the close of Salisbury cathedral, and ascribed to 
Melanchthon, who used the expression in one of his theses. 




Third Meeting House 



The Old Tunnel on tlie new site, corner South Common and Conimercial Streets, 
with new roof, tower, front and pews, was rededicated October 17, 1827, at 10.30 a m. 
In summer of 1832 it was enlarged to the present dimensions and twenty pews inserted. 

Sold to the Second Christian (Universalist) Society, February 14, 1837, who have 
occupied it ever since, having made numerous changes. 



ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF SISTER CHURCHES. 

Rev. Frank W. Padelford, 

Minister of the Washington Street Baptist Church, Lynn. 

I HAVE come this afternoon to bring to you on this in- 
teresting occasion the congratulations of your sister 
churches in Lynn. I can at best express, in a most inade- 
quate way only, our hearty feelings and good wishes. The 
presence of so many friends from all these churches ex- 
presses, more eloquently than I can hope to do, the con- 
gratulations of your brethren. I assure you that in a 
most sincere and fraternal spirit we rejoice with you to-day. 
These two hundred and seventy-five years of your his- 
tory have witnessed marked changes in their relations, one 
to another, of these Christian churches. These years 
cover at least three periods of relationship. There was 
first the period of bitter animosity and hatred, when each 
church regarded the other as an enemy, because, as they 
thought, an enemy to the truth and to Christ. This first 
period was followed by a second, when the bitterness dis- 
appeared, but when each regarded the other with suspicion 
and coldness. Both these have now given way to a third, 
when we gladly recognize each other as brethren because 
we are children of a common Father, living a common life, 
seeking to do a common work. Hatred and suspicion 
have been displaced by hearty interest and brotherly love. 
We recognize now that what concerns one concerns an- 
other. We share each others' sorrows and we rejoice in 



98 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

each others' joy. As the Apostle Paul has phrased it, " we 
are all members of the body of Christ" and our life is a 
common life. As your brethren in Christ, members one 
of another, we salute you on this happy occasion. 

I have been wondering how it must feel to be two hund- 
red and seventy-five years old ! The church which I have 
the honor to serve (the Washington Street Baptist) cele- 
brated its fiftieth anniversary two years ago. We felt 
very ancient then but when we stand beside you to-day 
we feel very youthful. 

Two hundred and seventy-five years! What must it 
mean to this community that this one church has given to 
it two hundred and seventy-five years of consecutive, con- 
secrated service? Nothing but the book of the recording 
angel could convey any adequate conception of what that 
has meant. Nothing but eternity can reveal it. The 
church is the most important institution in the community ; 
more important than the school, the literary organizations 
or the government itself. The church is the foundation of 
the school, the inspiration of the libraries and it furnishes 
the moral fibre of the government. What this city is and 
what it has been for nearly three centuries is due in no 
small degree to this First Church of Christ in Lynn. 

One of the most remarkable phases of our Christian 
civilization is the disproportionately strong influence 
which the Christian church exercises in the community. 
Not more than one-tenth of the people of Lynn to-day, 
probably, are members of any Christian church and yet 
the Christian churches can exercise more influence than all 
the other institutions if they so desire. The church can 



Address — Rev. Frank W. Fade I ford 99 

accomplish almost anything it desires in the community 
to-day. This old First Church looks insignificant in a way. 
At no time in its history has it had more than five hundred 
members probably, and yet no one can conceive what this 
church has meant in the life and history of this city. Be- 
cause of what this church has meant to Lynn for two hund- 
red and seventy- five years we congratulate you. 

Yet what of all this celebration anyway? If you had 
simply gathered to-day to celebrate the birth of an 
institution born two hundred and seventy-five years ago, 
if that were all, some of us would not care to spend our 
time here. But it is because it is a living institution, that 
is reviewing two hundred and seventy-five years of life, 
that there is some significance in this celebration. We are 
here because this old church is a living organism. We are 
here because we believe that the church has a future ; be- 
cause we believe that it is destined to do more in the days 
that are to be than in the days that have been. Some pro- 
fess to believe that the church is an institution of the past, 
but we believe that it is an institution of the past and of 
the future. We have seen as yet only a promise of what 
the church is to be and do. 

When the church comes better to understand its mes- 
sage, when it comes to see that it has a message to the com- 
munity as well as to the individual, it will do more than it 
has ever done in bringing in the kingdom. The mis- 
sion of the church is not only to convert and train the 
individual members of society but its mission is also to 
transform society itself, until the Kingdom in Heaven shall 
be the Kingdom on earth. When during the next few 

LOfC 



lOO Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

years of its life this church shall catch this larger vision of 
its mission, its influence will be vastly greater than in these 
years we celebrate. 

The Pilgrims and the Puritans had the right conception 
of the relation of the church and the community. Their 
only trouble was in the application of their principle. The 
church will never apply its principle and do its work in their 
way again but it will apply the principle in a truer form 
and do the work in a larger way. 

Not only, then, for what you have been and have done in 
these two hundred and seventy-five long years but for 
what you are to be and do, your sister churches bring you 
heartiest congratulations and best wishes to-day. It is 
our great hope that your next two hundred and seventy- 
five years may be marked by larger visions of truth, deep- 
er consecration to Christ and more glorious consummation 
of your work than in these two hundred and seventy-five 
splendid years of the past. 



Remarks — Chairman i o i 



The Chairman : In the Chapel is a large collection of 
curiosities connected with this church in days agone, but 
the only relic of the original meeting-house of 1632 is a 
vioUn made from its staunch timbers by Lysander O. 
Makepeace when eighty-four years of age. (Showing the 
violin to the congregation.) 

The communion service on its table in front of the pul- 
pit is a rare collection of Colonial silver contributed by 
various donors of many years ago. 

These pieces have been critically examined by Mr. John 
Albree and Miss Ellen Mudge Burrill, both of whom are 
well known to you as learned in Colonial lore, to which 
they have made many valuable contributions, and Mr. 
Albree has consented to favor us with a description of the 
pieces comprising this rare collection. 



THE OLD COMMUNION SERVICE AND ITS 
DONORS. 

John Albree, Swampscott, and Miss Ellen Mudge Burrill, Lynn. 
Members of The Lynn Historical Society. 

IT IS more than appropriate, it is a duty we owe those 
men of nearly two hundred years ago who gave these 
memorials to the First Church of Christ in Lynn, that we 
should spend a few moments in acquainting ourselves with 
the givers and the gifts. If we let this occasion pass with 
only a general impression of an array of silver, we shall do 
a wrong to the memory of the men of the past of this 
church and of this community. 

There are seventeen pieces in all in the service, repre- 
senting seven donors. Their value? May the day never 
come when such a question is raised. May this church con- 
tinue for centuries, still preserving unchanged these memo- 
rials of the men of old as tangible evidence of their love 
for the House of the Lord. 

In nearly every instance we can learn who the donors 
were, but yet there are other facts we ought to recall be- 
yond the mere mention of names. 

The gift, which in point of time was the earliest, com- 
prised two beakers, but there is no inscription to indicate 
the donor except the initials " L C," engraved on the bot- 
tom of each. The maker, however, left his trade mark 
which was " I C " with a crown above, and an animal below, 
the letters. Dr. Francis H. Brown, of Boston, has proved 



The Old Communion Service and Its Donors 103 

that this was the mark of John Cony, of Boston, whose 
name is indicated in a punning way by the animal. There 
are a number of pieces by Cony in Boston churches which 
are dated 1715 and 1717, and, as he died in 1722, we can at 
least tell the age of this gift, though who " L C" was re- 
mains unsolved. 

The next donor was John Henry Burchsted, a physician. 
That he was a native of Silesia, a province now divided be- 
tween Germany and Austria, is a fact frequently recorded 
by his cotemporaries. His first son, also a physician, was 
the father of twelve children through whom there is now 
an extensive posterity. John Henry Burchsted's friends 
saw fit to place upon his headstone in the Western burying- 
ground these lines which the severest critic will admit are 
at least in rhyme : 

"Silesia to New England sent this man 
To do their all that any healer can ; 
But he who conquered all diseases must 
Find one which throws him down into the dust. 
A chymist near to an adeptist come 
Leaves here, thrown by, his caput mortuum. 
Reader, PHYSICIANS Dy as others do; 
Prepare — for thou to this art hast'ning too." 

But he himself chose a more dignified and pleasing me- 
morial, for in his will, dated April 17, 1 72 1 , he said : 

" I give (as a toaken of my Love) unto the Church of 
Christ in Lyn the Sum of Forty Pounds PalTable money 
to be laid out for the furnishing the Table of the Lord 
there; and to be Paid by my Executrix within three 
months after my Decese." 



I04 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

With this bequest there were bought four pieces of sil- 
ver, a large covered tankard, a smaller one without a cover, 
and two beakers, the smaller of which has a handle. All 
bear the same inscription: "The Gift of John Henry 
Burchsted, Physitian, to the first Church in Lynn, Sep*^ the 
25^^ 1 72 1." The date of his death as given on his head- 
stone was Sept. 20, 1 72 1. 

Again Dr. Brown's researches enable us to identify the 
maker whose trademark was "A T, " with a crown above 
the letters. This was the mark of Andrew Tyler, a gold- 
smith of Boston. It will suffice now to say that he was a 
brother-in-law of the famous Sir William Pepperell, the 
victor at Louisburg. 

A few months later the church received another bequest. 
This was from Hon. John Burrill. He was a grandson of 
George Burrill, one of the first settlers of Lynn. Hon. 
John Burrill, the Speaker as he is designated, from his 
early manhood served the public in many ways — in the 
Indian Wars, in the Andros troubles which in Lynn raged 
over the possession of Nahant, as town officer, clerk, se- 
lectman, treasurer, assessor, as judge, as member of the 
House of Representatives for twenty-one years, during ten 
of which he was Speaker, and at last as member of the 
Governor's Council under the Province Charter. 

There is a pathetic feature about this gift which was 
made by will. John Burrill fell a victim in an epidemic of 
that terrible scourge of our ancestors, small-pox. The 
General Court had left Boston on account of the preva- 
lence of the disease and, after sitting in two or three places, 
was at Harvard College. Here Burrill was stricken and, 



The Old Communion Service and Its Donors 105 

in the midst of his agony, he made his will Dec. 6, 1721, 
four days before his death. His wish is thus expressed : 

" I give to the Church of Chrift in Lynn fourti pounds 
towards the furnishing the table of the Lord thear and to 
Bee paid within two years after my Defeas." 

Whether Dr. Burchsted's gift had been completed by 
this time we know not, but we do know that Andrew Tyler 
was again given the commission, for the Burchsted pieces 
are duplicated exactly and they bear Tyler's mark. The 
four pieces are inscribed: 

"The Gift of the Honourable John Burrill, Esq'' to the 
first Church in Lynn, December y^ 10'^ 1721." 

A two-handled beaker of graceful shape bears this in- 
scription : 

" The Gift of Mr. Ralph Tompkin to the First Church of 
Christ in Lynn 1726." 

Of Ralph Tompkin, or Tonkin as he signed his will, we 
know little. In that instrument he styled himself "Inn- 
holder" and directed as follows: 

" I give & bequeath as a Token of my Love and Regards 
to the Church of Christ in Lyn Tenn pounds in money to 
be paid by my Executrix hereafter named within Six 
months after my Deceas and to be laid out by the ofhs- 
sers of s'd Church in plate for the use thereof." 

He left no children. The record of his marriage to Mrs. 
Mary Jeffords in Lynn, July 17, 1710, is that he was "of 
Great Britain." 



io6 Two Hundred Seventy- fifth Anniversary 

This beaker has no mark to indicate the maker. There 
are, however, a few dots on the bottom that are suggestive 
to one who has ever tried to center a piece in a turning 
lathe. The workman, in preparing to pohsh the beaker, 
evidently had some difficulty and then neglected to 
erase these evidences of his trouble. It is such an illus- 
tration of personality that always makes the study of 
these old articles interesting. 

The large Breed family of Lynn is represented by a 
tankard inscribed: 

"The Gift of Capt° lohn Breed, Deceaf'd, to the first 
Chur[c]h* in Lynn, Decemb" y^ 14'^ 1728." 

Captain Breed provided for this in his will, which was 
dated Nov. 22, 1728. It seems well to quote from these 
original wills exactly and in full, in order that we may 
hear the wishes of the donors expressed in their own 
language. He said : 

" I give to the first Church of Chrift in Lynn Thirty 
Pounds, in paffable Money of New England, for furnifh- 
ing the Lord's Table, to be paid within Two years after 
my dif cease, to be laid out at the difcrefion of y^ pastor 
of s'd Church." 

In passing, attention might be called to the different ex- 
pressions adopted by the various testators to indicate how 
their bequests should be paid. These differences suggest 
a little of the terrible confusion of the monetary system of 
that day. 

* The c is omitted in the inscription. 



The Old Communion Service and Its Donors 107 

The relations between Captain Breed and the Rev. Na- 
thaniel Henchman were especially cordial, Mrs. Henchman 
having been taken as a child into Captain Breed's family. 
He also left Mr. Henchman ^50 and his "colash," a two- 
wheeled carriage, then a rare luxury. Of Captain Breed 
his widow is on record as having said that her husband 
" bought so much land that it kept us in debt and the fam- 
ily short and bare of clothing." 

The maker of this tankard was Jacob Hurd, of Boston, 
then but twenty-five years of age, an interesting man just 
entering on a life of activity and usefulness in the commu- 
nity. Specimens of his work are prized by collectors, 
both public and private. The Henchman and Hurd fam- 
ilies were connected by marriage and this may account for 
the fact that the most beautiful pieces in the collection are 
his work, these being the bequest of Col. Theophilus Bur- 
rill. There are four pieces, a covered tankard, two beakers 
and a plate for bread, all of excellent workmanship. Of 
the seventeen pieces in the collection the plate, now 
serving as a baptismal bason, is the only one in use, as 
some three or four years ago the individual communion 
service was adopted by the church.* 

The inscription on each of the four pieces is : 

"The Gift of Theo. Burrill, Esq' to the first Church of 
Chrift in Lynn." 

In addition the Burrill coat of arms is elegantly engraved 

♦ It has not been practicable to learn how long the Theophilus Burrill platter has 
been used as a baptismal bason Inquiry among elderly people has shown that, 
prior to 1853. the bread was passed on pewter platters. In 1853 two pieces of plated 
silver were given to the church and these, together with two more, g^iven respec- 
tively in 1866 and 1S69, have since been used in the distribution of the bread. 



io8 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

on each piece. Col. Theophilus Burrill was a brother of 
Hon. John Burrill, whose gift has already been described. 
Col. Burrill's life bore a striking resemblance to that of his 
brother for, like him, he served the public in military and 
civil positions and finally became also a member of the 
Governor's Council. He served this parish as Clerk and 
Treasurer for several years. Both brothers lived on 
Boston Street, John at Tower Hill and Theophilus at the 
corner of Federal Street. He, too, delayed making his 
will until death approached. On June 14, 1737, heat- 
tended to this duty and thus declared his wish : 

" I give unto the First Church of Christ in Lynn One 
Hundred Pounds in paiTable Bills of Credit to purchase 
such Plate for y^ use of y*" Communion Table as may be 
thought proper by my Executrix and y^ Pastor of s'd 
Church within Six Months after my Decease." 

Twenty days later, on July 4th, he died. His widow 
was sole executrix, and so before us we have the expres- 
sion of what Mrs. Burrill and the pastor, Mr. Henchman, 
"thought proper," and on seeing the four pieces we must 
approve their taste. Did the beautiful service given by 
his brother John, as he saw it on Communion Sundays, com- 
mend itself to him as a memorial such as he would like ? It 
would seem so, for he also left money to the Second Church 
at Lynnfield, and to the Third Church at Saugus, and each 
church bought communion services. 

By this time it may be well to say a word about the uses 
of these articles. The tankards, as you see, are clumsy and 
not so well adapted for use as the more shapely beaker. In 



The Old Communion Service and Its Donors 109 

practice it worked out that the tankard was used to hold 
the wine and from it the beakers were filled. The result 
was that later a lip was added, the shape became taller, 
and the flagon shape was evolved, such as we of later years 
have been accustomed to see. The shape of the beaker, 
or as we now call it the communion cup, has not been much 
changed. 

Incidentally, by a process of evolution, an article which 
is typical of American life has grown from the tankard. 
This has been done by making the tankard larger, though 
retaining the same lines, and then adding a lip, and the re- 
sult is the silver ice pitcher. 

An interesting fact developed yesterday afternoon as 
the silver was being brightened after its sojourn in the 
safety vaults. Remember, please, that we are speaking 
of silver one hundred and seventy-five and two hundred 
years old, and that thoughts and customs change with 
the revolving years. This is spoken of, because what fol- 
lows may be a little surprising. It was noted that there 
was a slot filed under the lower end of some of the handles 
and it was discovered that a whistle was thus formed. 
One practical man suggested this was a vent such as is now 
left in the manufacture of hollow ware. Further investi- 
gation has shown that one use suggested the other, for it 
has been established that what may have been made as a 
vent for gases arising from the solder, did actually become 
a whistle which was used to indicate that the tankard was 
empty. Hence the saying, " You may whistle till you get 
it." Do not misunderstand! This is spoken of to show 
that two hundred years ago the uses of silver for the com- 



no Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

munion service had not been differentiated and specialized 
as now. In other words, these articles are types of what 
was the best table ware in use two hundred and more years 
ago. 

There remains to be mentioned one beaker with a handle. 
There is no mark of any description which might give a 
clue to either the donor or the maker. The workmanship 
is of the same character as the others, so it may be inferred 
that it is of the same age. Imagination may conceive it to 
have been the gift of some thoughtful soul to the House of 
the Lord, but because his name was not engraved it was 
lost with the passing of his generation. 

May those who shall succeed us two hundred years hence 
find as good and as pleasing reasons for bringing us to mind 
as we have to-day in recalling those men of two centuries 
asro. 



Note:— Many of the older New England churches possess pieces of silver that 
were donated by loyal members in years gone by and an examination of these gifts 
frequently yields interesting results. In such investigation it will be found helpful 
to consult" some of the books mentioned below 

A mrrican Silvr-r. the work of the seventeenth and eighteenth century silversmiths, 
exhibited at the (Boston) Museum of Fine Arts June to November, 1906, Boston, 
MCMVI. This catalogue of an exhibition of over three hundred specimens, gives 
the makers' names and marks, the inscriptions and a general description, fully 
illustrated. 

Old Platf, its Makers and Marks, by J. H. Buck, New York, Gorham Manufac- 
turing Company, MCMIII. This, while treating of the general subject, is the most 
complete work on American silver. The author is the curator of that department 
in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. 

Old Scottish Communion Plate, by Thomas Barnes, with a preface by James 
MacGregor, Moderator of the General .Assembly, Edinburgh, R. & R. Clark, 
MDCCCXCII. This throws much light on the purposes and uses of the silver which 
was owned by the old Puritan churches in America in which the Scotch influence 
was strong. 

Hall Marks on Gold and Silver Plate, llustrated, with revised tables of annual 
date letters employed in the Assay Offices of England, Scotland and Ireland, to 
which is added a History of L'Orfevrerie Francaise, by William Chaffers, ninth 
edition. London, Reeves it Turner, 1905. This comprehensive work is generally 
recogfnized as a standard. 



READING OF SCRIPTURES. 

Rev. John O. Haarvig. 

Ephesians I. 

15. Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the 
Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, 

16. Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention 
of you in my prayers : 

17. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father 
of Glory, may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and rev- 
elation in the knowledge of him : 

18. The eyes of your undertsanding being enlightened; 
that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what 
the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. 

19. And what is the exceeding greatness of his power 
to us- ward who believe, according to the working of his 
mighty power, 

20. Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him 
from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the 
heavenly places, 

21. For above all principality, and power, and might, 
and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in 
this world, but also in that which is to come : 

22. And hath put all things under his feet, and gave 
him to be the head over all things to the church. 

23. Which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth 
all in all. 



112 Two Hundred Seventy-fijth Anniversary 

Ephesians II. 

1 . And you hath he quickened who were dead in tres- 
passes and sins; 

2. Wherein in time past ye walked according to the 
course of this world, according to the prince of the power 
of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of 
disobedience : 

3. Among whom also we all had our conversation in 
times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of 
the flesh and of the mind ; and were by nature the children 
of wrath, even as others. 

4. But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love 
wherewith he loved us, 

5. Even when we were dead in sin, hath quickened us 
together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved,) 

6. And hath raised us up together, and made us sit 
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus : 

7. That in the ages to come he might show the ex- 
ceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness toward us, 
through Christ Jesus. 

8 . For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that 
not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 

9. Not of works, lest any man should boast. 

10, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ 
Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained 
that we should walk in them. 



Remarks — Pastor 113 



The Pastor : Most of the former pastors of this church 
have either passed on to the better land or are hving at such 
distances, that it is impossible to have them with us on this 
occasion. We are favored, however, by the presence of 
two of them, Dr. James M. Whiton, of New York City, to 
whose pungent and scholarly address we listened this 
morning with great interest. The other is the Rev. John 
O. Haarvig, of Allston. 

Some men we respect because of their scholarship, cour- 
age, or efficient qualities; some men elicit our affection by 
the warmth of their sympathies and the sincerity of their 
unselfish devotion. Some men we both respect and love; 
such is the one who is about to speak to us, especially a 
brother beloved. 



ADDRESS -FAITH'S WIDER VISION. 

Rev. John O. Haarvig, Allston, Mass. — Pastor 1893-1895. 

1DEEM it a very great privilege to be with you on this sig- 
nificant and joy-inspiring occasion. I rejoice with you 
in your prosperity as a church, and in the possession of the 
glorious inheritance which has given to you an exceptional 
position of honor and influence among our churches. It 
is my earnest prayer that the blessing of God may continue 
to fructify all your labors, and cause this plant of the 
centuries to flourish even more abundantly in the future 
than in the past. 

To-night our thought sweeps a wide circle. We are 
on the heights, where the horizon of our vision is wonder- 
fully extended. We are under the spell of time's immen- 
sities. We are stirred with the feelings of gratitude, rev- 
erence and awe. Our hearts and heads are bowed before 
the Infinite One, 

" From out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand." 

Anniversaries like this serve to give us a vivid realiza- 
tion of the divineness that lies hidden in the great move- 
ments of time. It is good for us, now and then, to move 
away from the little whirls and eddies of things present 
and local to where we can observe the forward trend of the 
majestic river which issues from the eternal throne. It 
is a suggestive fact that the great astronomers have been 



Address — Rev. John 0. Haarvig 115 

men of faith. The reason is near at hand : their thoughts 
move in the orbits of greatness, where laws and forces are 
seen in their mightiest combinations, where the mathe- 
matics of the universe is given its most impressive illus- 
tration, and where the marshalings of power are observed 
in overwhelming displays of shining strength, so that the 
mind of man instinctively voices Kepler's prayerful obedi- 
ence, " O God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee." And so, 
when we turn from the seconds and minutes of our little 
individual lives to the processes and movements in his- 
tory when the hours in the clock of time are heard to 
strike, we begin to feel sure that the ruling and overruling 
hand of Providence is active in the affairs of humanity; 
we seem to feel with new appreciation that 

" Through the ages one increasing purpose runs." 

Any fair and large- visioned knowledge of the past will 
deepen faith and quicken that reasonable optimism which 
pulsates in every great achievement for God and man. 

And we need the larger historic vision which this occa- 
sion gives us that we may do justice to the past. The 
fruitfulness of the present is often rooted in the faithful- 
ness of the past. Those earlier seed sowings in sacrifice 
and heroism made possible the present harvestings in 
freedom and joy. We recall John Fiske's tribute to Puri- 
tanism in connection with modern civilization. It is a 
sure sign of immature thinking to speak of the fathers with 
a sneer. "They builded better than they knew;" but 
they builded, and with fewer and clumsier tools than are 
in the hands of their more favored children. To-night, 



ii6 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

therefore, we render homage to those vahant souls, faith- 
ful to the light that guided them, who wrought not for 
themselves alone, but for the coming generations. ' ' Other 
men labored, and ye are entered into their labors." More 
than they realized, they lived and toiled for us. Whether 
as lonely watchers of the skies, reading the signs of their 
times, or as humble toilers in the common drudgery of life, 
they worked for the future. Were their songs crude, and 
sometimes in the minor key? The pathos and the power 
of the epic poem were in their souls. Was the mold of 
their thinking often narrow? They were governed by 
burning convictions, and an ounce of conviction is better 
than a pound of opinion. The ring of sincerity and of 
reverence was in their lives. Undoubtedly, they were 
bitterly dogmatic at times; but it is well to remember that 
narrowness is not the worst thing in the world. Indeed, 
there is a kind of narrowness always needed, that of the 
iron track of duty, making moral progress possible, and 
that of the unsheathed sword in defense of liberty. Their 
work was not that of the nerveless, inglorious sluggard, but 
rather of the indomitable hero in the strife. It is easy 
sometimes to idealize the past ; but let us never forget that 
those men and women of bygone years lived in the power 
of their own ideals, for in them they saw celestial fire, and 
were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. 

But while the wider historic vision is needed for a fair 
estimate of the past, it is also needed for a worthy appreci- 
ation of the living present. The God of our fathers is 
leading us to larger things. What are we doing with our 
more glorious opportunity? If greater privilege means 



Address — Reu. John 0. Haarvig 117 

increased responsibility, then upon the heart and con- 
science of the church to-day Hes a burden of exceptional 
obligation. The freer thinking of to-day, the wider catho- 
hcity, the richer sense of brotherhood, the multiplicity of 
the means of service, the flood of illumination, from vari- 
ous sources, upon the fundamental verities of our faith — 
these and other elements of our priceless opportunity are 
not merely superior advantages in which we may rejoice, 
but divine challenges to the church to meet the new duties 
of the new age in the old spirit of sacrifice, heroism, conse- 
cration and hope, and in the power of that ministering love 
which draws its inspiration from the cross of Calvary. 

In all the triumphs of the past, in all the problems of our 
complex social life, in all the eager searchings for ultimate 
truth and reality, in all the unconscious and unvoiced needs 
of great masses of men waiting for a supreme leadership 
through the tangled perplexities of our restless life, we may 
hear the voice of Providence saying to the church, "Be- 
hold I have set before thee an open door." 

And finally, the historic vision which this unique anni- 
versary makes possible to us serves to accentuate the truth, 
that in the great work for the triumph of the everlasting 
Kingdom all may have a share. The lowliest as well as 
the loftiest in station have their places in the ongoings of 
the redemptive purpose of God. The glorious inheritance 
which is ours represents not only the leadership of the 
commanding voices in the years that have gone, but the 
fidelity and devotion in the rank and file. The hills of 
time are thronged with the unknown laborers who had 
learned to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness and 



Its Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

to desire to spend and be spent for the sake of others. 
God be praised for the wider and more potential ministry 
of the few choice and gifted souls who have enriched the 
world with their generous contributions of voice and pen; 
but let us also thank God for the services of the many — 
the humble unknown souls whose names are written in the 
Lamb's Book of Life, and whose prayers and praises and 
self-denials have made us their debtors. As in the mate- 
rial universe there is a place for the little flower by the 
roadside, the single blade of grass, and the diamond 
drops of dew, as well as for the mighty oak, the towering 
mountain, and the swelling ocean, bearing on its bosom 
the wealth of nations, so in the Kingdom of Grace every- 
one, whether having much or little, whether knowing much 
or little, may have a useful and fruitful part. 

Thankful for the past, let us welcome the future with 
glad, earnest and brave hearts. 

** Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain 
in the Lord." 



Remarks — Pastor. 1 1 9 



The Pastor: From inquiries that have come to me 
during the day, it seems necessary that I should explain 
who the next speaker is, and what is his official position 
in the Congregational order. He is the Moderator of 
the National Council of Congregational Churches, which 
is the highest office of honor that these churches can be- 
stow. Perhaps some of you would understand better, if 
I should say that Dr. Gladden is the Archbishop of the 
Congregational Church. He has no official power, by the 
stroke of his pen to create or demolish churches, to install 
or to depose ministers, nor to dictate rules of procedure in 
the life of the churches. But he has the power of insight, 
which is characteristic of the true prophet. He has the 
power to bring a wide and thorough scholarship with a 
rich and varied experience, into the Councils of the church, 
for their good; he has the power to apply the prophetic 
vision to the problems of social and industrial righteous- 
ness for the benefit of all. His voice has been heard, and 
his worth has been recognized. He has been chosen to 
high official position, because of what he is. He does, in 
and through that position, what he, with God's help, is 
able to do. The position neither creates nor measures 
but only recognizes the power of the man. Such a one 
from his exalted view-point, with his keenness of vision, 
and from the richness of his scholarship and experience, 
will sjpeak to us upon " The Church of the Future." 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 

stretching forward to the things that are before — Phii<. hi, 13. 
Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., LL.D., Columbus, Ohio. 

YOU know what words precede these, in this sentence : 
' ' Forgetting the things that are behind. ' ' The Apostle 
is describing his attitude as a disciple and follower of Jesus 
Christ. He has much to remember and much to hope for; 
but between the memories that detain him and the prom- 
ises that beckon to him he does not suffer himself to linger. 
"This one thing I do: forgetting the things that are be- 
hind and stretching forward to the things that are before, 
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus." 

Shall we say that Paul's attitude, at this moment, is the 
right attitude for us always? No ; we had better say noth- 
ing of the kind. It was a momentary attitude; it was a 
passing phase of Paul's experience; but you cannot harden 
a phrase like this into a maxim. There has been too much 
interpretation of the Bible that has followed some such 
rule. Just at this moment Paul felt like forgetting the 
things that were behind; there were other moments when 
he wisely and profitably remembered them. The past has 
its uses. None of us can afford to ignore the past. Some- 
times we need to remember it that we may be humbled; 
sometimes that we may be comforted and lifted up. It is 
often possible for us in the pauses of our march to set up 
the memorial of our gratitude and write upon it: " Hith- 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 121 

erto hath the Lord helped us." To fail of that is base in- 
gratitude. 

You have not been forgetting, to-day, the things that 
are behind. You have been gratefully and piously re- 
membering them. They are worth remembering. Your 
hearts have been comforted and your hopes have been 
strengthened by these memories. 

But the past is not our sole nor our best inheritance. 
The largest and most precious of our possessions are in the 
future. There is a time to remember and there is also a 
time to forget — a time to let the dead past bury its dead, 
and to stretch forward to the things that are before. 

Sometimes our pride in our progenitors makes us con- 
temptuous of our neighbors. " We have Abraham to our 
father," bragged the Jews, despising all other races. That 
is the place for a wholesome forgetfulness. 

Sometimes we are so elated by past achievements that 
we feel no need of present fidelity. That is the time for 
dropping a curtain upon the days gone by. 

Sometimes we are depressed and burdened by past fail- 
ures. That is the time for forgetting the things that are 
behind, and stretching forward to the things which are 
before. 

We see, then, that both these phases of experience are 
normal. It is good to look back that we may be humbled 
and comforted, but when the backward look makes us 
conceited or indolent or despondent we had better look 
the other way. You have had your backward look to-day, 
and I trust that it has brought you courage and inspira- 
tion; to-night you have chosen to turn your faces in the 



122 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

other direction, and you have asked me to come and 
speak to you about the church of the future. 

It is wise, I think, for the church, as it gathers up the 
memories of past years, to consider well what the years to 
come have in store. We cannot do our work in the pres- 
ent unless we have some clear and definite conception of 
what the future is to be. The present is organically and 
vitally related to the future. Our thought of the harvest 
determines our sowing. The gardener and the husband- 
man would not know how to do the work of the spring if 
they had not some clear notion of what was expected in 
the autumn. In all our industries our plans for the pres- 
ent are determined by our thoughts about the future. 
Education is a blind and foolish enterprise unless we have 
some conception of what life means and what we are going 
to make of it. 

The religion of which we are the inheritors has always 
kept the thoughts of disciples and worshippers fixed upon 
the future. This was true in a remarkable degree of the 
ancient Hebrew faith. Although very little emphasis 
was placed by Hebrew teachers and prophets upon the 
life after death, the generations of the future held all their 
hopes. The expectation of a Kingdom which was to fill 
the world with righteousness and peace, and of a King who 
was to reign in justice, to be the protector of the weak and 
the friend of the friendless and the champion of the op- 
pressed and the downtrodden — under whose scepter 
order and welfare and fruitfulness and beauty were to be 
universal — this was the great expectation which kindled 
the soul of the prophet and tuned the harp of the Psalmist 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 123 

through all the generations of Jewish history. The one 
theme of Hebrew thought was the Church of the Future. 
In the inspiring hopes which clustered about this theme 
the people found the uplift and the invigoration of their 
national life, and won the energies which have made them, 
through all the ages of their dispersion, a people of such 
wonderful vitality. 

Christianity simply took up this Hebrew hope and trans- 
figured it ; the thoughts of the apostles were always fixed 
upon the future; the glory of Christ yet to he revealed was 
the inspiration of all their life; the New Jerusalem, the 
glorious church of the future, into which were to be gath- 
ered all nations and kingdoms and tongues, was the goal 
of all their thinking and their striving. 

Not only by all the traditional influences of our religion 
are our eyes turned toward the future, but the philosophy 
now prevailing makes a similar demand upon our thought. 
The most brilliant piece of historical generalization re- 
cently produced develops this idea — that the dominat- 
ing force in evolution is the control of the present by the 
future. " From the very nature of the principle of Natural 
Selection," says Mr. Benjamin Kidd, " we see that it must 
produce its most efficient results where it acts through the 
largest numbers. The interests of the existing individuals 
and of the present time, as we see them, are of importance 
only as they are included in the interests of the unseen 
majority in the future." 

According to this theory, which, indeed, lacks little of 
the force of a mathematical demonstration, those institu- 
tions only survive which are fitted to meet the demands of 



124 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

the future. It is the principle of "projected efficiency'" 
which rules the movement of the evolutionary forces. 
"The types in the present around us to which the future 
belongs are those which will hold it under the operation 
of this principle. When the future arrives it will be the 
forms equipped to the best effect with the qualities 
through which this principle finds expression, which will 
have survived to represent it." (Western Civilization, 
Chap. 2.) 

It would seem, therefore, to be in the highest degree 
rational that we should consider carefully what kind of a 
church the future is likely to demand, in order that we 
may shape our work as builders in the present to meet that 
demand. We want to build so that our work shall last. 
There is, St. Paul tells us, such a thing as building, on the 
true foundation, with gold, silver, precious stones — ma- 
terials that are practically indestructible ; and there is such 
a thing as building on the same foundation with wood, hay, 
stubble, whose substance the fire wipes out, whose ashes 
the winds blow away. We want to build enduring walls 
on the good foundation. 

I shall ask you, therefore, to think about the direction 
in which the church is likely to be developed in the genera- 
tions before us. It will be but the briefest and most 
meager outline of this development which I can suggest. 
On this summer evening we cannot undertake any careful 
or exhaustive study, but a mere pencil sketch may be ser- 
viceable, as giving some definiteness, to our thought and 
some direction to our labors. 

Let us not, however, forget that the needs of the present 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 125 

must not be sacrificed in our care for the future. The 
church which would be perfectly adapted to the wants of 
the people at the end of the Twentieth Century would not 
be adapted to the wants of the people at the beginning of 
the century. Those of us who are optimists, and most of 
us are, believe that the church existing a hundred years 
from now will be a far more perfect church than the one 
existing to-day; yet probably the church of to-day is bet- 
ter for to-day than that more perfect church would be. 
It is not well for institutions, any more than for individ- 
uals, to be too far ahead of their time; but it is well for 
them to be a little distance ahead of it, and to have a clear 
notion of the way that their time is travelling — the direc- 
tion in which it is moving, the goal to which it is going. 
Every social instrument with which we work is, and must 
always be, far short of perfection; and those whose ideas 
of what constitutes perfection are the clearest are always 
called to make sacrifices of their ideals, for the sake of 
progress. If they are unwilling to make these sacrifices, 
if they insist on putting into immediate practice their 
idealisms, they become mere visionaries and accomplish 
nothing, for the age in which they live. Bear in mind, 
then, that our sketch of the church of the future indicates 
a goal to which we are travelling, and not a programme 
for the year 1907. Some of the changes suggested we may 
be ready for now ; for others we must wait. 

I . Will the church of the future have a creed ? I think 
that it will. It may not be called a creed, but there will 
be certain principles and beUefs upon which it will rest 
and by which its work will be guided. Every organization 



126 Two Hundred Seveniy-fijth Anniversary 

which undertakes to do effective social work is founded on 
a creed. Political parties always have creeds. They 
change, somewhat, from decade to decade — not always 
so rapidly as they might; they often stick to old dogmas 
long after they are worn out ; they often fail to incorporate 
new truth when it is greatly needed. Both of the great 
parties will soon be revising and republishing their creeds, 
in preparation for the coming campaign. There will be 
considerable dead and rotten wood in both of them, but 
they will serve as rallying cries. More or less perfectly 
they will represent the ideas for which these great 
political organizations stand and which they work to 
promote. 

Every society or group of men has some such intellectual 
bond which generally finds expression in its constitution. 
The church of the future will have regulative ideas in 
which it will believe, and for the propagation of which its 
members will unite. These ideas will constitute its creed. 
Without such ideas it would have neither coherency nor 
purpose. 

I doubt, however, whether the creed of the church of the 
future will be as long or as elaborate as some of the creeds 
of the past have been. So far as it finds expression in 
words it will be a very simple statement of the most ele- 
mentary and comprehensive truths of religion, and it will 
be used for instruction rather than for exclusion, as a 
rallying cry and not as a barrier. The political parties 
lay down their creeds, but they do not expect universal 
assent to them. Each of these parties, in the campaign 
just before us, will be very glad of the support of many 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 127 

persons who do not pretend to believe nearly all they 
proclaim, but who, in the main, agree with them. 

My own belief is that faith in Christ will be in the future 
far more than it has ever been in the past, the central and 
constructive principle of the Christian Church. If any 
one thinks that His name or His power are likely to wane, 
as time goes on, I do not share that opinion. It seems to 
me that the entire movement of history, for the past nine- 
teen hundred years, makes such an expectation incredible. 

But faith in Christ is likely to take on a different mean- 
ing as time passes. The church will believe in Christ in 
quite another sense than that in which they now, gener- 
ally, believe in Him. What is meant by faith in Christ, 
for the most part, is faith in Him as a mediator between 
God and man,. as our substitute before the law, as the 
medium through whom we receive the forgiveness of our 
sins and the assurance of salvation. Faith in Christ is 
the appointed means by which we secure the salvation of 
our souls and an inheritance among them that are sancti- 
fied. 

Now I do not wish to disparage this kind of faith ; in its 
essential meaning I accept it for myself, and seek to bring 
others into the same experience. But after we are able to 
say all this, are we not far short of what is meant by faith 
in Christ? It seems to me that the faith in Christ which 
is really vital and essential means a great deal more than 
this. It is faith in Him as the Lord of life, the Prince of 
life, the Leader and Captain and King of men. 

To believe in Christ must be, first of all, to believe that 
what He has said about life and conduct is true; that His 



128 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

way of living is the right way. That was what He said 
about Himself: "I am the Way and the Truth and the 
Life." We might give to these phrases a deep metaphysi- 
cal or theological sense, as men have always been doing, 
but why not take them in the simplest and most natural 
sense? Why not say that the way of Jesus is the true 
way, and the living way — that to live as He lived is the 
only right way of living? 

That was the interpretation which the earliest disciples 
put upon His words. They had so much to say about the 
new " way" of life, that men began to call them the people 
of "The Way," and they seem to have adopted the 
epithet. 

What that early church tried to do, and but feebly suc- 
ceeded in doing, the church of the future will be con- 
strained to do. It will put at the foundation of all its 
work and worship faith in Jesus Christ, faith in Him as the 
Way and the Truth and the Life. It will clearly under- 
stand that its business in this world is to live in it as Jesus 
lived; to make His law of love the law of its life; to trust 
the Father as Jesus trusted Him; to love the brother as 
Jesus loved him. It will understand that faith in Jesus 
means nothing at all save as it helps us to be, here in the 
world, such men as Jesus was, and to do, here in the world, 
such work as Jesus did. 

It is hardly necessary for me to stop and prove that this 
has not, hitherto, been what is meant by faith in Christ. 
Many of us have had faith in Him as a personal Redeemer, 
but not many of us have had faith in Him as the director 
of practical affairs, and as the organizer and ruler of human 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 129 

society. We were ready to believe what He said about 
the saving of our souls; we were not at all ready to believe 
what he said about our every-day life in this world. The 
church, as a body, has never been willing to admit that 
the law of Christ can be applied to all the relations of 
human life. It has never supposed that business and 
politics, and society and art and amusements, and all the 
rest could be Christianized — at least, not yet. By and 
by, in the millennium, this rule would be practical, but 
not now. For the present the law of competition, the law 
of struggle, with self-interest, enlightened self-interest, of 
course, as the regulative principle — this was the regimen 
to which we must conform. Of course there were oppor- 
tunities for compassion and self-denial; these assuaged 
somewhat the wounds and the bitterness of the struggle, 
but strife was the law and good-will was the merciful ex- 
ception. That Christ's way of living is practicable or 
possible in this world has been constantly and consistently 
denied by most of those who bear the name of Christ. 
What Malthus, the great English economist and publicist 
(who, by the way, was a clergyman), most explicitly said, 
has been echoed by the social philosophers of every gen- 
eration : " The great Author of Nature, with that wisdom 
which is apparent in all His works, has made the passion 
of self-love beyond comparison stronger than the passion of 
benevolence." According to this when Jesus bids us love 
our neighbor as ourselves. He commands us to repudiate 
and contemn the law of God as revealed in the nature He 
has given us. What right have we to be loving our neigh- 
bors as ourselves, when the great Author of Nature has 



130 Two Hundred Seventy -fifth Anniversary 

illustrated His wisdom by prompting us to love our- 
selves more, beyond comparison, than we love others? 

Such teachings as these have been assumed, even when 
they have not been boldly asserted, by most Christians 
who have undertaken to tell us how we ought to live in 
this world. Jowett, the great Master of Balliol, was an- 
other clergyman of eminence; and we have his word for it, 
that ''Providence has been pleased to rest the world on a 
firmer basis than is supplied by the fleeting emotions of 
philanthropy, viz., self-interest." While Archbishop Magee 
one of the most brilliant and popular of recent English 
ecclesiastics, declared that the Sermon on the Mount was 
not a practical rule of life ; that any attempt to live by its 
precepts would simply reduce society to chaos. These 
great ecclesiastics only give expression to the common 
sentiment of the church. Have we not heard, all our 
lives, the constant protest that the morality of Jesus is not 
workable, in existing social conditions; that it is a " counsel 
of perfection" which we ought to admire but cannot at 
present be expected to follow? Is it not the prevailing 
belief that no man can live by the Golden Rule in business? 
When one man, a few years ago, ventured to frame it and 
hang it up in his factory, was not that fact trumpeted all 
over Christendom as a unique experiment, and did not 
nine-tenths of our Christian people shake their heads and 
say that the thing could never be done? 

What does all this prove but that the church does not 
believe and never has believed in Jesus Christ ? We have 
tried to believe in Him enough to get our individual souls 
saved from the wrath to come and made sure of heaven. 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 131 

but the great first central truth that He lived and died to re- 
veal to us — the truth concerning the Kingdom of Heaven 
which He came to establish in this world — this we have 
never believed ; we have hardly begun to take it in. Gen- 
eration after generation He has been standing in the mar- 
ket place, in the forum, in shop and mine and factory, 
calling unto men and saying: "Take my yoke upon you 
and learn of me: let me teach you how to manage your 
business, how to organize your industrial life, and your 
civil life and your social life ; how to live together as neigh- 
bors, and workers and fellow-citizens : this is the one thing 
needful : this is what I came to do — to establish, here in 
the world, the Kingdom of Heaven; and I can do this; be- 
lieve in me, trust me, try my way; it will give you comfort 
and prosperity and peace!" and generation after genera- 
tion the church that calls itself by His name has turned 
away murmuring, " Visionary ! Impracticable ! It would 
never work!" And when His voice has sometimes been 
raised, imploring us to listen to Him and learn of Him, we 
have grown a little impatient of our Lord, I fear, and have 
found ourselves wishing that He would not meddle with 
matters with which He is not familiar; that He would have 
less to say about setting up the kingdom in this world, and 
would content Himself with preaching to us the good old 
gospel which does n't mind much about this world but 
shows us how to get safely away from it to another and a 
better world. 

Is not this, practically, the attitude which the Christian 
Church has been holding, in your day and mine, toward 
Him who claims to be Lord of all life and Ruler of all the 



132 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

Kingdoms of this world? Is it true to say that those who 
maintain this attitude toward Him really believe in Him? 
As Redeemer and Saviour of the individual soul millions 
have believed in Him, and have found peace in believing. 
But how have they belittled His mission when they have 
refused to recognize Him as the Founder in the world of a 
kingdom of righteousness and peace! 

" Whom say ye that I am? "was the searching question 
which He put to His disciples. Simon Peter answered and 
said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
The Christ, the King, that was Peter's great answer — 
"Blessed art thou, Simon, son of John," was the Lord's 
reply, "for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee 
but my Father which is in heaven." That great insight 
of Peter is precisely what the church of these generations 
has failed to gain. Failing in that, its vision is dim and 
its hold upon life is feeble. You may believe whatever 
else you will about Jesus Christ but if you doubt that He 
is able to rule this present world by His law of love, you 
have done Him grievous dishonor. It is the entertain- 
ment of this doubt which has brought upon the church of 
these generations feebleness and shame. 

The church of the future will, I trust, believe in Jesus 
Christ. It will be ready to accept Him not merely as 
Mediator and Reconciler between God and man but as 
Captain and King of men. It will understand that His 
main business with us is not to show us how to get safely 
out of this world into another, but how to live in this world. 
It will believe that His way of living is the right and reason- 
able way, the pleasant way, the prosperous way. It will 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 133 

believe that the Golden Rule is practicable every day and 
everywhere. It will believe that when we all try to help 
one another there will be more for all than when we are 
all trying to get the best of one another. 

There have been signs, of late, that the church might 
be able, some day, to take Jesus at His word. That great 
faith of Malthus and Jowett in the beneficence of selfish- 
ness which most of us have shared, has been rather rudely 
shaken by recent disclosures. We are not nearly so sure 
as once we were that the maxim " Every man for himself" 
makes a straight path to Paradise. And that little book 
of Mr. Sheldon's, that simple little book, which really pro- 
posed to take Jesus seriously — the way the world held 
that book in its hands and pondered it, was reassuring. 
It looks as though there were a good many poeple, outside 
the church, who were almost persuaded to believe in Jesus. 
And I cannot doubt that the time is coming — I hope it is 
not far away — when the church itself will be filled with 
the victorious energy of that all-conquering faith. It will 
be a great day for the church and for the world when the 
church heartily begins to believe in Jesus Christ. 

What the other articles of the creed of the future church 
may be I am not much concerned to know. When it has 
once accepted Christ as the Lord of its hfe. He will guide 
it into all truth. I doubt if we could clearly outline the 
forms of its confession. Such a change in its life as would 
be wrought by the full recognition of this central truth of 
Christianity, would appear in its intellectual attitude; 
some dogmas that now loom large might retire into the 
background; some that we now speak lightly would gain 



134 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

new emphasis. It will be a creed about which it will not 
be necessary to argue : the truth as it is in Jesus does not 
lean on logic, it shines by its own light. 

2. Some might be curious to inquire what forms of 
worship the church of the future will employ. They 
would like to know whether it will have a ritual ; whether 
it will resort to the use of elaborate ceremonials, or whether 
its services will be plain and simple like those of the Friends 
or the old Puritan. 

I think that there is likely to be a great variety in forms 
of worship in the church of the future — far less of uni- 
formity than at present. I am sure that there will be less 
disposition to insist on forms — or on the absence of forms; 
on rites or on the condemnation of rites. The Spirit will 
be allowed to find its own natural and appropriate expres- 
sion. Each group of worshippers will be allowed to wor- 
ship God according not only to the dictates of their own 
consciences, but according to their own aesthetic preferences. 
The attempt to tie whole denominations down to one way 
of uttering their religious feelings will, by and by, be found 
inexpedient. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is 
liberty — of thought and expression. 

The one sure thing is that worship will be a central and 
essential element in its life. What Mr. Pike has said 
about the church of the present will be no less true of the 
church of the future: "One very important, perhaps the 
most important function of the church is to give both 
opportunity and incentive to congregate worship, intensi- 
fying the individual's spiritual aspiration and influences 
by the reciprocal action of the multitude upon him, and 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 135 

thus furnish at once the fountain and the channel for 
power and inspiration which go forth in a thousand rills 
to water the desert places of humanity till they blossom 
as the rose." 

It will never be any more possible to neglect this than 
it will be possible for men who wish to be strong for work 
to neglect to supply themselves with nourishing food and 
pure air. Social worship has always been the source of 
the church's strength and always will be : when that is 
neglected, the church's energies fail. The church of the 
future is as sure to be a worshipping church as the man of 
the future is sure to be an eating and breathing man. 
That it will be a working church we may indeed confident- 
ly hope; but it will be not less a praying church; its worship 
will inspire its work, and its work will lend significance to 
its worship. The church will be busy bringing heaven 
down to earth, and therefore it will have need to be fa- 
miliar with the ways that lead to heaven. Those who say 
that work is worship are wise if they mean that worship is 
worthless that does not end in work, but they are not wise 
if they mean that the worker has no need to worship. 

3. Respecting the organization and government of the 
future church some of us might wish we knew. There 
will be, let us trust, increasing co-operation in all the 
greater things of the kingdom, and, for this purpose, in- 
creasing unity; but this co-operation in large interests 
will be combined with much flexibility of methods. The 
local congregations will be allowed to work out their life 
in their own way. Home rule, for the local churches, 
will be the prevailing principle. It will prevail, because it 



136 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

is the democratic principle, and because, as Dr. Hunger 
says, if the church and the nation are to move on together, 
the fundamental principle of each must be the same. In 
a monarchical or aristocratic government, a monarchical 
or aristocratic form of church organization might prevail; 
but in a democratic state the church will take on more and 
more of the forms of a democracy. " The nation cannot 
say one thing and the church another. The dominant 
spirit of the greater will silently find its way to the whole, 
and a free nation will create a free church, by however 
many names it may be called." The nervous fear lest we 
may lose our liberty does not seem to me a rational fear. 
It is the last thing we are likely to lose. 

As for the independence that means isolation and a 
heartless individualism, we have had, already, more than 
enough of this, and the church of the future will get rid of 
this, and substitute for it a far larger measure of co-opera- 
tion than we Congregationalists have ever known. We 
are not going to surrender our democracy, but we are going 
to learn how to make our democracy spell efficiency, both 
in church and in state. 

As I write these words there lies upon my table an Eng- 
lish Congregational newspaper in which I read this con- 
fession : 

" In our love of liberty we have largely lost the liberty 
of love. We have made a vice of our chief virtue. We 
have narrowed our fellowship to the 'two or three' as 
though Christ had only two or three. The catholicity, 
the comprehensiveness of the communion of the saints, 
we have allowed our Congregationalism to cripple. The 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 137 

finest things in fellowship we have missed — the fuller 
fraternity, the bigger brotherhood, the larger life. In the 
evolution of Congregationalism there is a missing link. It 
is precisely the link that is missing. We have made a 
fetish of our freedom. We have forgotten that our faith 
means federation. We have forgotten that salvation 
means brotherhood. We have insisted on the apotheosis 
of the individual church. We have stopped short of co- 
operation." 

I am quite of the opinion of this English Congregation- 
alist, that we are not going to stop any longer at that halt- 
ing place. We shall realize our brotherhood. To some 
of us the proposed union of the three denominations has 
been welcome because of the promise which it gives us of 
escape from our barren independence into that larger 
measure of interdependence and co-operation which the 
Spirit of Christ always inspires. And I am perfectly sure 
that the churches now known as Congregational will realize 
this larger life in the future, no matter by what name they 
may be called. And when that purpose dominates their 
life they will find it easy to make good their claim to be 
the solvent of sectarianism, and the leader of the churches 
in the ways of Christian unity. 

4. Most serious of all the questions which we can ask 
respecting the church of the future is the question of the 
place that it shall occupy and the function that it shall 
fulfill in the social order. In the steadily unfolding life 
of the world in which we live what part will be taken by 
the church? 

This question has been answered, already for substance, 



138 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

in what I have said about the faith of the church in Christ 
as King. A church which beHeves in Christ as the Lord, 
and Ruler of all our life in this world, will be seeking, al- 
ways, to bring all the kingdoms of life under His law. And 
for a church which really believes in Jesus Christ this will 
not be a difficult thing to do. For when the church be- 
lieves in Him, and lives, itself, by His law, the rest of the 
world cannot for long help believing in Him, too. A 
church which took Jesus at His word, which accepted, in 
good faith, His law of love as the rule of its life ; a church 
whose members illustrated Christianity in all their daily 
conduct, would furnish a demonstration of the truth of 
Christianity before which skepticism would be silent and 
opposition powerless. It would be so plain that the way 
of Jesus is the right way to live together that everybody 
would soon be ashamed of trying to live in any other way. 

The conditions of life in such a society as that would be 
very different from those with which we have now to deal. 
Life would be simpler, saner, quieter; the collisions, the 
frictions, the irritations that now wear away our strength 
and spoil our peace would be absent ; when everybody was 
seeking not his own advantage supremely but was con- 
sidering also the welfare and happiness of the rest, the 
noises of strife and confusion would cease. War would be 
forever done away — political war, industrial war ; men 
who have learned to live by the Golden Rule have no 
reason for fighting. 

And, of course, all those glaring contrasts of condition 
which are now so painful would exist no longer. There 
would be no plutocrats, and no paupers. No man who 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 139 

has learned of Jesus Christ what Hfe means would ever 
dream of piling millions on millions to satisfy the mere 
lust of gain, and the society which was pervaded by the 
mind of Christ would be a society in which ambitions of 
that sort would smother, for lack of the sordid atmosphere 
in which alone they live. Nor would there exist in such a 
society the oppressions by which multitudes are trampled 
down and disabled in the mad rush for gain. Such mil- 
lionism as we now glory in, at one end of the social scale, 
means and must always mean misery at the other end. 
The society which is ruled by the Christian law will put 
an end to such injustices by subduing, in the heart of man^ 
the greed from which they grow. 

It need not be imagined that in such a society there 
would be no differences of power or possession ; no diversi- 
ties of gifts or fortunes. The strong and the weak, the 
rich and the poor, the happy and the sorrowful, would be 
mingled together; but there would be no chasm between 
classes; sympathy and help would flow from those in 
power to those in need; love would find in want and suffer- 
ing its largest opportunity. 

We are taking a long look ahead. We are feasting our 
eyes upon the vision of what shall be when the church 
shall have borne its full witness to the truth as it is in 
Jesus, and won the world to His allegiance. But it may 
be well to cast our eyes for a moment upon a future less 
remote and less beatified; upon the scenes in which the 
church, by its faithful witnessing, is fighting the good fight 
of faith and winning this victory. None of us will ever 
see the full glory of the city that is even now coming down 



140 Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary 

from heaven to earth; but many who are Hstening to me 
may hve to behold the Christian Church rising to a clearer 
understanding of its mission, and grasping the great sig- 
nificance of that living faith in Christ of which we have 
been speaking. It must be that that apocalypse is nigh, 
even at the doors. It must be that the time is at hand 
when in this new revelation of His presence and His power 
our Lord will appear. When His disciples once get it 
clearly into their minds what it means to believe in Him, 
we shall see some wonderful things taking place among 
the churches. The social stratifications which now exist 
among them will begin to disappear as icebergs disappear 
in a tropical sea. The church which has attained unto 
that kind of faith will resolve to be a genuine democracy. 
The rich and the poor, the cultured and the simple, the 
high and the lowly will find their home in it, owning one 
Master, and learning of Him how to dwell together in 
unity. All ostentation and parade of wealth will disappear 
from such churches, because they will have first disap- 
peared from the lives of the members of these churches. 
It is impossible that the people who have come to think 
that Jesus' way of living is the true way should indulge in 
any such extravagances of living as those which glare and 
brawl about us in this age of gilt : and it is equally impos- 
sible that they should wish to worship in churches where 
luxury and splendor dazzle all the senses. 

I think that the day is drawing near when the churches 
which are accounted as strong churches will not be those 
in which the worshippers lavish tens of thousands of dol- 
lars annually on art or oratory or music for their own de- 



Address — Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D. 141 

lectation, and in which no man stands any chance to be 
chosen an officer unless he can boast a big bank account 
or a high social position, but rather those in which such 
social distinctions are abolished, and a genuine Christly 
love gathers together men of differing ranks and orders 
and welds them into a true brotherhood. 

I think that many of you will live to see scores and hund- 
reds of such democratic churches, in all our great cities; 
churches whose edifices are inexpensive, but beautiful; 
churches that shun the gilt-edged neighborhoods and seek 
the districts, never far away, where the common people 
live; yet churches to which thousands of the well-to-do 
resort, because they prefer their simplicity to the splendor 
of the costly temples on the avenues, and because the 
hearty fellowship of common men is more welcome to them 
than the devout snobbery of the Mammon worshippers; 
churches which identify themselves in manifold ways with 
the neighborhoods in which they stand and reach out thou- 
sands of hands with greeting and good cheer and friend- 
ship to all sorts and conditions of men whose homes lie 
round about. I think that we shall have churches, one of 
these days, a good many of them, which are strong, finan- 
cially, and, in the best sense, socially, because their mem- 
bership includes men and women of means and of brains, 
as well as multitudes of men and women who belong to 
the chivalry of labor; in which Jesus Christ, if He were 
here, or any other working carpenter, would feel at home ; 
in which the social conditions would be such as He could 
cordially approve; in which He would see that His own 
law of brotherhood was finding fit and proper expression. 



142 Two Hundred Seventy-fiflh Anniversary 

We are going to have such churches and they will be our 
strong churches, our influential churches, our leading 
churches. There will be no question about the place they 
hold in the social order. They will be the light of the 
world: out of their windows the beams shall shine that 
bring comfort and blessing to many. They will be the 
salt of the earth; their saving health will keep society 
sweet and sound; they will be the social leaven whose 
noiseless influence shall spread from life to life until the 
whole is leavened. 

I give you joy, beloved, that you, in this ancient church, 
are planted where you can realize this ideal upon which I 
have been asking you to look. You are here, in the midst 
of the common people ; you have them with you : yours is a 
church in which the rich and the poor already meet to- 
gether owning the Lord who is the Maker of them all. 
For all of you, for the rich not less than the poor, this is an 
occasion of profound thanksgiving. You have only to 
seize and use your opportunity. You can make this 
church such a power in this community as it has never 
been. Whether it stands for the new theology or not is 
not just now the burning question; make it stand for the 
new Christianity ! No church has a better field or a louder 
call to lead in the new faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour 
of the world. If you will heed this call and accept this 
task, you will do for Christ and your country in the last 
quarter of your third century a greater work than has been 
done in all the fruitful years on which you look back to- 
night with thanks and praise. 



APPENDIX 



MINISTERS. 



Stephen Bachiler, (St. John, Oxf.). 

(Organized Church) June 8, 1632. 
Samuel Whiting, D.D., (Emmanuel, 

Installed Nov. 8, 1636. 
Thomas Cobbet, Colleague, (Oxf.) . 

Installed July, 1637. 
Jeremiah Shepard, (Harvard). 

Ordained Oct. 6, 1680. 
Joseph Whiting, Colleague, (Harv.). 

Ordained Oct. 6, 1680. 
Nathaniel Henchman, (Harvard). 

Ordained Dec. 17, 1720. 
*John Treadwell, (Harvard). 

Ordained March 2, 1763. 
Obadiah Parsons, (Harvard). 

Installed Feb. 4, 1784. 
Thomas Cushing THACHER,(Harv.). 

Ordained Aug. 13, 1794. 
Isaac Hurd, (Harvard S.T.D., Dart.). 

Ordained Sept. 15, 1813. 
Otis Rockwood, (Middlebury) . 

Ordained July 1, 1818. 
David Peabody, (Dartmouth). 

Ordained Nov. 15, 1832. 
Parsons Cooke, D.D., (Williams). 

Installed May 4, 1836. 
George Esdras Allen, fBroSn%nrv.*r' 

From Jan., 1863. 



( Dismissed by the Court of Assist- 
•n ants Jan., 1636. Died at Hack- 
( ney, Eng., 1660. 

Cambridge) . 
Died Dec. 11, 1679 
( Dismissed 1656 
I Died Nov. 5, 1685 



Died June 2, 1720 
^ Dismissed July, 1682 
I Died April 7, 1723 



Died Dec. 
( Dismissed 
( Died Jan. 
C Dismissed 
I Died Dec. 
^ Dismissed 
I Died Sept. 
^ Dismissed 
} Died Oct. 
( Dismissed 
( Died Dec. 
( Dismissed 
I Died Oct. 



23, 1761 
Mar., 1782 
5, 1811 
July 16, 1792 
1801 

Feb. 3, 1813 
. 24, 1849 
May 22, 1816 
4, 1856 
May 23, 1832 
30, 1861 
April 22, 1835 
15, 1839 



Died Feb. 12, 1864 
( To Jan., 1864 
) Died Feb. 19, 1896 



*0n his dismissal by the Council he retired from the ministry and became judge 
of the Court of Common Pleas which corresponds to the present Superior Court. 



1 46 Ministers 

James Morris Whiton, Ph.D., (Yale). 

Ordained May 10, 1865. Dismissed Apr. 13, 1869 

♦Joseph Cook, LL.D., ^f^^.^^X' S ^^ ^^^ 1' ^^^^^ 

From May 1, 1870. ' } Died June 25, 1901 

James Romeyn Danforth, D.D., ^*'*jBli^tf°'' 

From April, 1872. To Sept., 1872 

Stephen Rollins DENNEN,D.D.,'i^°j; ( Dismissed Mar. 29, 1875 

Installed Nov. 13, 1872. ' ( Died Jan. 18, 1898 
Walter Barton, (Amherst). ( Dismissed Feb. 19, 1884 

Installed Feb. 24, 1876. ( Died March 29, 1896 

Frank Jarvis Mundy, (Rutgers). 

Installed Dec. 4, 1884. Dismissed Apr. 2, 1889 

James Blair Dunn, D.D., ^^ffc.KT' S ^^^signed July 24, 1892 

From Sept. 1, 1889. " ( Died March 19, 1906 

John OlAF HaARVIG, (^'^'^^^Ge^an^""""') 

Installed Oct. 24, 1893. ' Dismissed May 28, 1895 
William Cross Merrill, ^'fier?t*r' 

From Mar. 22, 1896. ' Resigned Nov. 23, 1902 

George William Owen, (Hamilton). 

Ordained July 1, 1903. 

Ordination also includes installation over this Church. 

Dismissals were made by ecclesiastic councils which may 
have been initiated by either the Minister or the Church, but 
resignation applies only to those not installed. The services 
of some acting pastors were engaged for a definite period, and 
the relation terminated without further action by either party. 

♦Originally Flavius Josephus Cook. 



Deacons 



147 



DEACONS. 



♦John Ballari>. 

1698. 
♦Thomas Laughton, Jr. 

1699. 
♦Thomas Burrage, 

1713. 
♦Daniel Mansfield. 

1721. 
♦Richard Johnson. 

1730. 
John Burrage. 

Chosen 1739. 
♦Joseph Haven. 

1742. 
♦ John Lewis. 
1756. 
Joseph Gray. 

Chosen Nov. 22, 1763. 
John Burrage. 

Chosen Apr. 23, 1771. 
Theophilus Hallowell. 

Chosen July 14, 1780. 
Captain William Farrington. 

Chosen Aug. 6, 1780. 
Nathaniel Sargent. 

Chosen Apr. 1, 1795. 
Jesse Rhodes. 

Chosen Apr. 1, 1795, 



Died June 11, 1725 

Died Dec. 19, 1713 

Died Mar. 11, 1717 

Died June 11, 1728 

Died Sept. 22, 1754 

Died May 15, 1761 

Died Mar. 14, 1749 
I Will probated 
;Oct. 5, 1778 
I Administration granted 
' Dec. 9, 1784. 

Died June 28, 1780 
Withdrew 1792 
Died Sept. 28, 1833 
Withdrew 1792 
Died Nov. 1, 1808 

Died Sept. 23, 1798 

Died Jan. 3, 1821 



*These persons were in office of Deacon at 
their election are unknown. 



the time indicated, but the dates of 



148 



Deacons 



Colonel John Burrill. 

Chosen Nov. 26, 1818. 
Emery Moulton. 

Chosen Apr. 19, 1821. 
George Martin. 

Chosen Oct. 5, 1827. 
Richard Tufts. 

Chosen Apr. 21, 1834. 
Joseph W. Abbott. 

Chosen May 8, 1866. 
Thomas F. Bancroft. 

Chosen Dec. 29, 1868. 
Benjamin F. Moore. 

Chosen Dec. 29, 1868. 
Joseph E. F. Marsh. 

Chosen Jan. 20, 1874. 
Benjamin N. Moore. 

Chosen Mar. 23, 1877 
Franklin Bacheller. 

Chosen Nov. 9. 1877. 
Edward A. Williams. 

Chosen Nov. 16, 1877. 



Died Dec. 2, 1826 
\ Suspended Mar. 31, 1834 
I Died June 13, 1850 

Died Dec. 17, 1868 

Died Feb. 29, 1880 

Resigned Jan. 12, 1881 

Died Aug. 26, 1871 

Withdrew Apr. 22, 1869 
\ Resigned Oct. 4, 1878 
I Died Oct. 26, 1904 

Resigned Oct. 29, 1877 
\ Resigned Jan. 12, 1881 
( Died Oct. 8, 1899 

Resigned Jan. 12, 1881 



Formerly Deacons were chosen for life. In 1881, the Church 
rules were changed so as to choose them for a term of years. 

Joseph W. Abbott. 



Chosen Jan. 12, 1881. 
Charles W. Gordon. 

Chosen Jan. 12, 1881. 
Joseph F. Rogers. 

Chosen Dec. 27, 1881. 
Henry Johnson. 

Chosen Dec. 31, 1884. 
JosiAH Starr. 

Chosen Jan. 1, 1889. 



Died Apr. 13, 1890 
Term exp. Dec.31, 1884 
Died Oct. 9, 1905 
Died Dec. 28, 1892 



Deacons 



149 



Richard H. Mansfield. 

Chosen Dec. 30, 1890. 
George H. Martin. 

Chosen Dec. 27, 1892. 
Maxwell W. Day. 

Chosen Dec. 27, 1892. 
Henry Dudman. 

Chosen Feb. 28, 1893. 
Henry M. Waldrat. 

Chosen Jan. 2, 1894. 
Lemuel C. Norton. 

Chosen Jan. 3, 1896. 
John J. McKenzie. 

Chosen Dec. 28, 1897. 
Herbert P. Boynton. 

Chosen Feb. 17, 1905. 
Freeman H. Newhall. 

Chosen Feb. 17, 1905. 



Resigned Jan. 1, 1894 



Term exp. Dec. 31, 1895 



150 Church Clerks 



CHURCH CLERKS. 



The Pastor acted as Clerk of the Church until 1859, after which 
date some member of the Church has been chosen to the office. 

Deacon Richard Tufts served as Church Clerk from May 

19, 1835, until April 19, 1836, during a vacancy in the pastor- 
ate. 

Francis P. Breed, Jan. 24, 1859 

James E. Patch, Dec. 31, 1861 

Thomas F. Bancroft, Jan. 3, 1865 

John H. Alley, Dec. 31, 1867 

*JoHN D. Haskell, Dec. 29, 1868 

John F. Patten, April 26, 1869 

Stephen W. Clark, Jan. 2, 1872 

H. Henry Fairbanks, Dec. 31, 1872 

fBENJ. N. Moore, March 16, 1877 

Allen C. Cobb, March 23, 1877 

Guilford S. Newhall, Dec. 30, 1879 

John E. Morse, Jan. 1, 1884 

Guilford S. Newhall, Feb. 25, 1890 

J. E. F. Marsh, Jr., Jan. 10, 1902 

Guilford S. Newhall, Dec. 29, 1903 

*Resigiied April 22, 1869. tResigned March 2.3, 1S77. 



Superintendents of Sunday School 



151 



SUPERINTENDENTS OF SUNDAY SCHOOL. 

(Founded 1817.) 

Amos Blanchard. 

Emery Moulton. 

Waterman. 

Samuel Lamson. 
Ripley P. Adams. 
George Martin. 
Dr. Silas Durkee. 
George Martin. 

George Martin 
Ben J. F. Moore. 
John Wales 
Benj. F. Moore 
John Wales 
Franklin Bacheller. 
fBENj. F. Moore 
Joseph W. Abbott. 
John F. Patten. 
Francis P. Breed. 
Henry P. Emerson. 
John W. Darcy. 
Guilford S. Newhall 
Henry J. Pote. 
John J. McKenzie. 
Alfred H. Crowther 
John J. McKenzie. 
J Wilfred Barnes. 
Lemuel C. Norton. 
Joseph L. Obear. 
John J. McKenzie. 

The Sunday School records previous to 1875 cannot be found and the y^^rs when its 
Superintendents are believed to have been elected are obtained from other sources. 
The names before 1833 are not known to be complete. 

The ratifications by the Church of such elections are taken from the Church records. 

*The only authority is contained in the appendix to the volume on the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary June 8, 1882. This name does not occur el|ewhere either m 
the Church or parish records, vital statistics, or m contemporaneous Lynn history, nor 
can the name be remembered by any of the older parishioners. 

tResigned April 22, 1869. tResigned Oct. 6, 1901. 



1817 (Died May 25, 


1842) 


After 1818 and before 1831 


Unknown* 




1831 




1832 




1833 




1841 




1842 




Election by the 


Ratification bt 


SUNDW SCHOOI. 


THE Church 


1855 


Dec. 31, 1855 


Jan. 3, 1859 


Jan. 3, 1859 


Dec. 30, 1861 


Dec. 31, 1861 


Dec. 1863 


Jan. 13, 1864 


Dec. 1864 


Jan. 24, 1865 


Dec. 1865 


Jan. 2, 1866 


Dec. 1868 


Dec. 29, 1868 


May 1869 


Dec. 28, 1869 


Dec. 1871 


Jan. 2, 1872 


Dec. 1872 


Dec. 31, 1872 


Dec. 28, 1874 


Dec. 29, 1874 


Dec. 12, 1882 


Jan. 2, 1883 


Dec. 4, 1883 


Jan. 1, 1884 


Dec. 8, 1890 


Dec. 30, 1890 


Dec. 19, 1893 


Jan. 2, 1894 


Dec. 28, 1897 


Dec. 31, 1897 


Dec. 13, 1898 


Dec. 27, 1898 


Dec. 12, 1899 


Jan. 12, 1900 


Oct. 6, 1901 


No action 


Dec. 10, 1901 


Jan. 3. 1902 


Dec. 12, 1905 


Jan. 2, 1906 



152 



Parish Clerks 
PARISH CLERKS. 



The earliest book of Parish 
1721-22, the date of separation 

Colonel Theophilus Burrill. 
John Brintnall. 
Captain Benjamin Pottor. 
Daniel Mansfield. 
Captain William Collins. 
John Jenks. 

Captain William Collins. 
Benjamin Gray. 
Colonel John Mansfield. 
Ephraim Breed. 
James Williams. 
Colonel Frederick Breed. 
Charles J. Burrill. 
Colonel John Burrill. 
Henry A. Breed. 
George Martin. 
Richard Hazeltine. 
Amos Blanchard. 
Jesse Rhodes. 
Daniel N. Breed. 
Andrews Breed. 
Augustus Haskell. 
Francis P. Breed. 
Thomas H. Swazey. 
George H. Chadwell. 
Thomas F. Bancroft. 
James E. Patch. 
Francis P. Breed. 
Henry P. Emerson. 
C. J. H. Woodbury. 
Freeman H. Newhall. 
Louis M. Schmidt. 



Records is inscribed March 5, 
of town and parish. 

March 12, 1721-22 
March 22, 1730-31 
March 27, 1732 
March 28, 1737 
March 31, 1738 
March 30, 1741 
March 17. 1745-46 
March 26, 1760 
March 22, 1762 
March 27, 1781 
April 7, 1791 
March 14, 1792 
April 5, 1814 
April 10, 1815 
March 27, 1821 
March 25, 1822 
Feb. 3, 1823 
March 21, 1825 
April 4, 1826 
March 26, 1827 
April 17, 1832 
April 25, 1842 
April 28, 1857 
April 18, 1864 
April 17, 1865 
April 16, 1866 
May 4, 1868 
April 19, 1869 
April 21, 1873 
April 16, 1888 
April 20, 1897 
April 18, 1898 



Parish Treasurers 



153 



PARISH TREASURERS. 



The earliest book of Parish accounts is inscribed March 5, 
1721-22, the date of separation of town and parish. 



Colonel Theophilus Burrill. 
John Brixtnall. 
Captain Benjamin Pottor. 
Daniel Mansfield. 
Captain William Collins. 
John Jenks. 

Captain William Collins. 
Edmond Lewis. 
Benjamin Gray. 
Colonel John Mansfield. 
Ephraim Breed. 
James Williams. 
Colonel Frederick Breed. 
Enoch Johnson. 
Dr. James Gardner. 
Richard Hazeltine. 
Dr. James Gardner. 
Amariah Childs. 
Dr. James Gardner. 
Daniel N. Breed. 
Andrews Breed. 
Francis P. Breed. 
Benjamin V. French. 
George H. Chadwell. 
Freeman H. Newhall. 



March 12, 1721-22 
March 22, 1730-31 
March 27, 1732 
March 28, 1737 
March 31, 1738 
March 30, 1741 
March 17, 1745-46 
March 24, 1755 
March 26, 1760 
March 22, 1762 
March 27, 1781 
April 7, 1791 
March 14, 1792 
March 19, 1813 
April 5, 1814 
March 27, 1821 
March 25, 1822 
April 21, 1823 
April 26, 1824 
March 26, 1827 
April 17, 1832 
May 4, 1868 
April 21, 1873 
April 16, 1883 
April 18, 1898 



The Treasurer's accounts were kept in pounds, .shillings and 
pence until Jan. 1, 1796. 



OFFICERS— June 9. 1907. 



Pastor — Rev. George William Owen 

CHURCH OFFICERS 
Deacons (in seniority of election) — Josiah Stakr, Richard H. 

Mansfield, George H. Martin, Henry Dudman, 

Lemuel C. Norton, John J. McKenzie, Herbert P. 

BoYNTON, Freeman H. Newhall 
Clerk — Guilford S. Newhall 
Treasurer — Miss Abbie A. Butman 
Membership Committee — Pastor, Clerk, Deacons, Mrs. 

Eugene A. Newhall, Mrs. Barclay L. Spurr, Mrs. 

Anna M. Tuttle 
Social Committee — Mrs. Herbert M. Hill, Chairman 
Visiting Committee — Mrs. Henry R. French, Chairman 

PARISH OFFICERS 

Clerk — Louis M. Schmidt 

Treasurer — Freeman H. Newhall 

Standing Committee and Assessor >< — Henry R. French, Chair- 
man; Herbert P. Boynton, J. Ernest Burpee, George 
H. Chadwell, Robert Elder, C. A. B. Halvorson, Jr., 
Charles B. Hamilton, Herbert M. Hill, Guilford 
S. !<ewhall, Herbert W. Rice, George A. Wilson, 
C. J. H. Woodbury 

SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Superintendent — John J. McKenzie 

Assistant Superintendents — Philip Emerson, Joseph L. 
Obear, Samuel H. Newhall 

Secretary — William B. Gilchrist 

Treasurer — William B. Moore 

Librarian — Charles L. Finney 

TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE 
Chairman, C. J. H. Woodbury Clerk, Henry R. French 

From the Church. From the Parish 

Herbert P. Boynton Henry R. French 

Philip Emerson Freeman H. Newhall 

Miss Leila W. Holder J. L. Pendleton 

Guilford S. Newhall Louis M. Schmidt 

Rev. George W. Owen C. J. H. Woodbury 
Miss Clara M. Staton 
George A. Wilson 






1908 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 077 666 A 



